The rise and fall of George Santos inspired a micro-wave of comedian impersonators, but no one captured his impishly corrupt energy of the disgraced former congressman better than Bowen Yang across multiple episodes of SNL.
For our purposes here, I’ll highlight the biggest platform Yang got for his channeling of Santos’ grifter energy: a December 2023 cold open shortly after the New York representative was officially expelled from the House.
“Fine, so I’m no longer Congressman Santos,” he hilariously tells a group of reporters that he assembled himself. “I’m just regular old Professor Major General Reverend Astronaut Santos, Protector of the Realm, Princess of Genovia.”
The six-minute sketch culminates in a live piano number (“Scandal in the Wind”) that showcases Yang’s vocal talents. Truly, as Stefon might say, this cold open had everything.
Troye Sivan Sleep Demon
I consider this 2023 sketch to be the spiritual sequel to Bowen Yang’s appearance as the gay Oompa Loompa two years prior. When a woman gets admitted to the hospital after claiming to see a gay man dancing in her sleep in the middle of the night, Yang’s doctor character quickly discovers the “sleep demon” is, in fact, Troye Sivan doing the “Get Me Started” choreography, played to perfection by Timothée Chalamet.
The doctor’s diagnostic process is hilarious in and of itself — “What did he look like? Shirt as small as can be, pants as big as they come?” — but it’s his exasperation over the boundary between gay and straight fame that gives this sketch satirical bite.
“Isn’t he kind of famous?” the patient asks.
“He’s gay famous, it’s different,” Yang replies, shaking his clipboard in frustration.
“Oh, so he’s like Nathan Lane?”
“No, not at all!”
Exactly.
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