Five years later, Bowen Yang played Kim during his on-camera SNL debut. Yangs approach was wildly different. Instead of treating Kim like a noisy bloviator, Yang made him petty. He scowled, rolled his eyes and came across as a bitchy gossip.

Its no discredit to Moynihans talents to say that Yangs sketch is the one that stuck. Positioning a dictator as screamy and narcissistic is a no-brainer; finding irony in his personality is transgressive.

Yang had already spent several months writing for the show, but it was his premiere as a performer that showcased his ability to reinterpret old concepts with fresh irreverence. His funniest recurring character is fictional Chinese bureaucrat Chen Biao, a gleeful braggart who calls himself a crisis queen and once transformed Megan Thee Stallion lyrics into a Communist manifesto. When parodying Elton John , politician Andrew Yang and former writer Fran Leibowitz , Yangs mannerisms morph into well-calibrated caricatures, accentuating the uncanny (and sometimes obnoxious) intimacy derived from specific celebrities personas.