Saturday Night Live: Bowen Yang presents new Yao Ming impression

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Entering tonight’s new episode of Saturday Night Live, we had no idea we were going to be seeing Bowen Yang do an impression of Yao Ming. Also, that it would be the show’s spoof of Inside the NBA.

Usually, sports spoofs aren’t typically in the show’s wheelhouse, especially since a lot of the impersonations tend to a fall apart. Yet, Kenan Thompson as Charles Barkley is consistently amazing, and then we got to Bowen. The whole joke was mostly that Bowen was insanely tall and yet, it worked every single time. Yao Ming was an enormous NBA player, and he also hasn’t been all that public since his retirement.

There was another joke in this sketch, as well: That an NBA team in the Sacramento Kings had to basically field a team full of scrubs and random dudes. According to the sketch, the Kings ended up taking players out of the stands and using them in the game itself.

At the end of the day, we really wish that there was more from Bowen in the sketch. He had a funny bit in the opening but after that, we didn’t see enough of him the rest of the way. (There was another bit about the size of Yao’s hands.) It honestly felt like the cast were having as much fun as anyone watching Bowen trying to figure out how to act in this character.

Should this be a recurring sketch?

Probably not, but we like that the show found a way to make sure to not just rely on a Shaq impression like we’ve seen in the past. This was a good one-and-done, and at least a chance for the show to both introduce a new impression and also play off of some current events.

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New year, new host, and new hair for Bowen Yang were on the table in the promo for Saturday Night Live’s first show of 2022.

Actress Ariana DeBose, who plays Anita in the updated version of West Side Story, will be the first host of the new year. The Tony Award nominee is making her SNL debut.

Joining her will be musical guest Bleachers, who are subbing for rapper Roddy Ricch because of the latter’s Covid-19 exposure.

In the first promo, DeBose is joined by Jack Antonoff of Bleachers and Yang, who is complimented on his new white hair and “new you.” Of course, he’s not all-in on the “new” horizons of the year, as he confesses.

The second promo finds DeBose and Yang talking about the possible origin of Bleachers name, which is not well-received by Antonoff.

Watch the video above.

Bowen Yang goes blonde for 2022

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“Normative queer semiotics would suggest that I am ________ but they would be wrong,” the SNL star wrote on Instagram, showing his new bleached look.

‘SNL’ Cold Open: Joe Biden Blames ‘Spider-Man’ for All of Nation’s Problems

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James Austin Johnson’s Joe Biden made a return in Saturday Night Live’s first cold open of 2022 on Jan. 15, blaming everything on Spider-Man: No Way Home.

“There’s one simple thing you can do to make this whole virus go away: Stop seeing Spider-Man,” Johnson’s Biden said in a press conference, when addressing the rise in COVID-19 cases.

“Now think about it, when did Spider-Man come out?” he asked. “December 17. When did every single person get omicron? The week after December 17. Stop seeing Spider-Man. That’s really all I have to say.”

The president then opened the floor to questions from reporters, who pressed him about whether or not that was really his solution for all of America’s problems. “Yes,” he said. “Next question.”

“Do you think all COVID will end if people stopped going to the movies?” Bowen Yang’s reporter asked. “I didn’t say don’t go to the movies,” Johnson’s Biden replied. “I said stop seeing Spider-Man.“

When another reporter played by Heidi Gardner asked Johnson if that was based on any data, he replied, “Yes. Everyone in America has seen Spider-Man like eight times. Everyone in America also has COVID.”

In response to Yang’s question about experts saying the real problem was a lack of testing, Johnson said Spider-Man has a 98% on “au gratin potatoes.”

The question Johnson’s Biden was most excited to answer was if it’s possible there’s another version of President Joe Biden in the multiverse who actually wants people to watch the record-breaking superhero film.

“I’ve actually thought about this a lot,” Johnson said. “I’m consulting with Dr. Fauci and Dr. Strange. As far as I can tell, there are at least three Joe Bidens. One of them’s me. One of them is me, the Joe Biden that lost to Trump,” he continued. “And then there’s a third Joe Biden, who’s the greatest president in history.”

Johnson’s Biden said he’s so adamant about the fact that he lives in a multiverse because it makes more sense “than whatever the hell our current world is,” adding, “I wake up every morning and look at the news and think, ‘This can’t be right.’”

Mid-rant, a tattooed Pete Davidson made an appearance, who claimed he was the Joe Biden of “the real universe,” which was created as a joke in 2016 when the Chicago Cubs won the World Series and is about to collapse.

When Johnson’s Biden asked Davidson’s Biden if he was the president in that world, Davidson replied, “Of course not. Did you really think he’d lose four times, and then finally win when he was 78?”

“What about the rest of us? Are we OK in the real world?” Gardner asked, to which Davidson replied, “Everyone on Earth is better off in the real world, except one man named Pete Davidson. This world is maybe more fun for him.”

In her opening monologue, Ariana DeBose shouted out Afro-Latinas and was joined by a special guest for a West Side Story duet: Kate McKinnon.

“Did I hear, ‘Sing songs from West Side Story with Kate McKinnon’?” the SNL cast member chimed in. Together, DeBose and McKinnon sang a compilation of “Tonight,” “I Feel Pretty,” “Something’s Coming” and “America.”

In a later skit, SNL spoofed another popular musical, Sound of Music, with appearances from DeBose, McKinnon, Yang, Chris Redd, Andrew Dismukes, Chloe Fineman and Kenan Thompson.

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New year, new host, and new hair for Bowen Yang were on the table in the promo for Saturday Night Live’s first show of 2022.

Actress Ariana DeBose, who plays Anita in the updated version of West Side Story, will be the first host of the new year. The Tony Award nominee is making her SNL debut.