Op-Ed: SNL’s Gift to Asians in 50th Season Finale

By EMIL AMOK GUILLERMO

Bowen Yang gay? No, he’s still very Asian and straight.

And the very married Scarlett Johansson is still a white temptress with an unrequited crush on Yang that demands to be requited.

Both of them have wild sex with each other in an empty control room in 30 Rock.

And that’s just the first punchline.

It’s a premise for a sketch you wouldn’t have seen the last 50 years on “Saturday Night Live.”

But you’re seeing it now.

Happy AAPI Heritage Month?

Uh, sure. Of course. Why not? The show, which has been a barometer for cultural representation, finished its 50th season this weekend with a finale that screams diversity, reflective of a multicultural world that demands it be satirized.

And Yang is a big part of it.

As a critic-at-large in my amok columns over the years on the web and the ethnic media, I’ve written all too often about how the show in the past has been off-target when it comes to Asian representation or visibility.

It was just unrealistic, or stereotypical, relying on hacky jokes about Asian accents, the staple of everyday morning DJ racism.

But ever since Bowen Yang joined the show, and emerged as a go-to-star, the show has found its way to be more than black and white. Kenan Thompson doesn’t get to have all the fun.  

Yang, who caught fame prior to SNL by doing comic lip-synching on the web, has become one of the show’s chief diversity tools. He’s adept at playing all sorts of Asians, including Filipino TSA agents, and even white folk like J.D. Vance. And, of course, he has a penchant for playing inanimate objects like the white iceberg that sank the Titanic.

That’s versatility.

I was struck by the bold way his openness with his sexuality was made fun of in the finale, when cast members in a filmed sketch reveal that Yang has been only pretending to be gay “for the clout.”

It leads to a workplace hookup between Yang and Johansson, that leads to more.

But it turns out Yang is hooking up with female cast members Ego Nwodim, Heidi Gardner, and even Emily Ratajkowski.

If you’ve bemoaned for years about the lack of Asian male leads or Asian male sex symbols in TV and movies in general, that sketch just satirized the whole issue and sexualized every non-sexualized Asian on the planet.

In a good way.

But it wasn’t the only sketch in the show that screamed diversity. The musical guest was Bad Bunny who appears in a bit as new hire as an air traffic controller. I’d like to see Pete Hegseth do that job.

Another sketch with Mr. Bunny, featured him as the boyfriend of a bewigged Johansson, the both of them confronting another interracial couple, Marcello Hernandez and Ego Nwodim.

Mr. Bunny and Hernandez have a heated argument in Spanish where, instead of defending their girlfriends, the punchlines are translated in the subtitles—as complaints about their girlfriends.

It’s a funny bit based on our multicultural, multi-lingual world.

And then there’s the cold open which featured James Austin Johnson doing his Trump impression with the president doing what he does best—falling in love with dictators.

After Kim Jong Un and Vladimir Putin comes another notch in the belt, Saudi Arabia’s Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Couldn’t have been done as effectively without new cast member, Emil Wakim, who should thrive now that Trump has developed a thing for murderous Arabs.

Add it all up, with Yang as the cherry on top, and you have a 50th finale that shows how SNL has come a long way, looking like the world it makes fun of.

That’s not the way it’s always been.

Emil Amok Guillermo is a journalist, commentator and stage monologist. See him at the SF Marsh, 1062 Valencia St. 7pm, May 19 and June 2. See his micro talk show, “Emil Amok’s Takeout: What Does an Asian American Think” on YouTube.com/@emilamok1. Contact: www.amok.com