Pat (Saturday Night Live)

"Pat" debuted on December 1, 1990 (Season 16, Episode 7), with John Goodman hosting. In the sketch, Bill (Kevin Nealon) is thanking a friend over the phone for his new job, then asks whether Bill's supervisor is a man or a woman. Before he gets an answer, he has to hang up when Pat enters. Bill asks, "Do you have a boyf... girl... Are you married?" Pat explains that Pat's planned marriage to Chris fell through, because Chris got involved with Terry. Next Bill says he's trying to decide what to watch tonight: either a Giants-49ers game, or Murphy Brown. Pat states an inability to help on that matter, having rented a film: Tootsie. Bill's last effort, when they agree to go to lunch together, is to learn whether Pat has a wallet or a purse; Pat wears a fanny pack.[4]

Aired February 16, 1991 (Season 16, Episode 13). Again at the office, Roseanne Barr played Sue, who meets co-worker Pat. Dana Carvey, dressed androgynously, plays Pat's love interest Chris, and Nealon reprised his role as Bill.[5]

Aired April 13, 1991 (Season 16, Episode 17). Catherine O'Hara played a drugstore clerk, who tries to help when Pat asks for disposable razors. O'Hara asks whether they would prefer a pink or blue package, but Pat says they will take whichever is cheaper. Next, they need a lotion for after shaving. The clerk offers a "bracing tonic" (for a man) or a "soothing lotion" (for a woman). Pat asks for Vaseline Intensive Care. The clerk says, "Yes, everybody likes that." Next, Pat asks the increasingly nervous shop-woman for some antiperspirant. O'Hara, overwrought, asks, "Roll-on or spray?" Pat asks what is on sale. "Secret", O'Hara says with faux joviality. "Strong enough for a woman, but made for a man" (transposing the slogan, "Strong Enough for a Man, Made for a Woman"[6]). Pat makes one last purchase, for condoms; yet before O'Hara can draw the conclusion that Pat must be male, they proclaim, "I think contraception is the responsibility of both partners. What can I say? I'm a very sexual being!" The sketch ends when the clerk swoons out of sight behind her counter.[7]

Sweeney wrote on her website, "I lerve Catherine O'Hara!!!! I think I was as giddy to meet her as is possible for me. She was great fun on the show and in this sketch."[8]

Aired on May 18, 1991 (Season 16, Episode 20). When Pat goes to get a haircut, the hairdresser (George Wendt), has no idea whether to administer a male or female style. The stylist asks which magazine Pat would like to read, naming gender-specific titles (Sports Illustrated and Glamour). In response, they ask for People. When they say the haircut is to look good for a party, the barber asks what they'll be wearing, and they respond "Black". The barber attempts to find out Pat's sex by pointing to different prices for men and women displayed on the wall, but Pat simply gives him $20 and tells him to keep the change.[9]

Julia Sweeney wrote, "Christine Zander and I wrote this sketch about Pat – personally I think this is the very best one of all the Pat sketches. Pat goes into a barbershop to get a haircut and the barber is confused – is it going to be a man's cut or a woman's?"[10]

Aired on October 12, 1991 (Season 17, Episode 3). Co-workers Siobhan Fallon Hogan, Phil Hartman, and Kevin Nealon give Pat a surprise birthday party. As they chat, Nealon asks whether Pat has a biological clock; Siobhan says, "I think you'd make a really great moth... fath... role model," but Pat tells them about a dysfunctional family and unhappy childhood. Hartman makes the next attempt: "Pat, would you say that you are more like your mother or your father?", but they reply, "I'm a perfect combination of both!" One of their estranged parents (Kirstie Alley), also androgynous and named Francis or Frances, comes into the party; when Nealon asks about Pat's birth, again there are only ambiguous answers, as well as the parent saying "I had to be both mother and father to you ever since (Jean or Gene) ran off with...that thing". The co-workers start to sing For He's a Jolly Good Fellow, but have to change "he's" to "Pat's". Chris Rock had a minor role as a messenger.

Aired November 16, 1991 (Season 17, Episode 6). Linda Hamilton was the host in this episode, in which Pat decides to join a gym. Gym employee Andrea (Hamilton) cannot figure out their sex, so, filling in the application form, she asks for "age? ... height? ... sex?" and looks up hopefully. Pat says, "'Yes, please!' [stuttery laugh] That's my little joke." When they are asked for a middle name, the eager audience then finds out that the middle name is "O'Neill", again continuing the joke. (Pat never uses the middle name, as it is "embarrassing".) Andrea keeps trying: "Would you say that you're in good health? Do you have regular periods..." When Pat stares at her, Andrea hurriedly finishes, "... of activity?" Andrea tries again: "What kind of body are you going for? I mean, do you want a muscular V-shape?" (That would suggest Pat is male.) "Or something a little more curvy?" They reply, "Well, I just saw the movie Return to the Blue Lagoon. I'd sure like a body like that!" Andrea does not know whether they are referring to Milla Jovovich or Brian Krause. Andrea and fellow gym employee Ron (Tim Meadows) ask Pat which of them they would be more attracted to; Pat objects to the question; they suggest that Pat should go to the locker room. Just as the audience is about to see whether they enter either the men's or the women's, Kevin Nealon as a TV news anchor on Weekend Update interrupts with a Special Report alert. Upon returning to the Pat sketch, Andrea and Ron are laughing, with Andrea saying, "I guess our question is finally answered!", but only the studio audience might have seen which door Pat entered; the television viewer is still in the dark.

Aired on January 11, 1992 (Season 17, Episode 10) with Sweeney playing alongside Kevin Nealon as Bill, host Rob Morrow as Frank, Victoria Jackson as Dina, Dana Carvey and Mike Myers as guests, and Phil Hartman as the Narrator.

Aired April 11, 1992 (Season 17, Episode 17). In honor of having Sharon Stone as the host, Pat is brought in for a Basic Instinct interrogation process. The interrogators are played by Chris Farley, Dana Carvey, and Phil Hartman. The questions are sexual in nature: "Did you and Chris play any kind of games in bed?" Pat replies, "Role reversal! We felt it kept the relationship alive!" When asked, "Which one of you put on the condom?", Pat says, "We put it on together." Hartman asks, "if you were a baby, what color would your Pampers be, pink or blue?" Pat sounds surprised: "Diapers were all white back then!" Interrogator #2 (Carvey, who usually played Chris) begins to rant: "You're lying, Pat, you're lying! You're not telling the truth, and by God I'm gonna find out! You're not telling the truth, Pat, I'm gonna figure you out! I'm gonna figure you out!"[11]

Aired October 10, 1992 (Season 18, Episode 3). The SNL cast wrote a spoof of the 1992 film Single White Female, in which Melanie Hutsell as Hedra, using a wig to look androgynous, plays a new roommate who becomes obsessed with wanting to look like and be like Pat. Other characters are played by David Spade as a prospective tenant who flees, Joe Pesci as Graham Knox, and Dana Carvey as Pat's love interest Chris.

Graham tries to warn Pat about Hedra, but they cannot understand why anyone would obsess. "Well, maybe she's in love with you. Maybe she's gay. Or, or straight. Or bi." Hedra enters, wearing the same clothes, glasses, and short curly hair as Pat's. Graham says, "Just look at the two of you. You look like bro... sist... twins."

Aired October 24, 1992 (Season 18, Episode 4). Pat is hired by a new firm. Carl (Walken), an account executive, has returned to work from needing a leave for psychiatric problems. As the co-workers gather in the office, he expresses his extreme perplexity and discomfort around Pat to Phil Hartman. At last he is driven insane by the enigma of Pat and dives out the window.[12]

Aired January 16, 1993 (Season 18, Episode 11). Harvey Keitel plays a shipwrecked sailor on a desert island, who has grown lonesome is then greeted by another castaway, who turns out to be Pat. Pat gives Pat's typical ambiguity, telling of the situation where Pat was on a luxury cruise playing shuffleboard "The battle of the sexes, and we won!" when the ship was attacked by a violent storm and Pat was thrashed overboard and ended up on the sailor's island. Although Keitel was made up to have some ambiguity such as long hair, it was obvious he was male as he wrote in his journal "I miss the intimacy of a woman, or at least some good male companionship". Later, the sailor asks Pat what sex is Pat. When Pat is about to speak, Adam Sandler is in the audience, breaking the fourth wall. He tells Pat that NBC is going through hard times with the departure of David Letterman and if Pat spoils the joke then Saturday Night Live will be ruined because NBC will be bereft of all comedy.

Quentin Tarantino told Playboy in 1994, "There was only one sketch that Julia Sweeney, the actress who plays Pat did on Saturday Night Live that gave a clue to what Pat is. It was the sketch that Pat did with Harvey Keitel. And the thing is, they kissed in it. At one point they were thinking of taking the kiss out of the sketch. But Harvey, being Harvey, demanded they keep it in, that there'd be no integrity without the kiss. So that was the first time we'd seen Pat in an intimate situation – a smooch. There is a certain way that you hold your head, the way you come in for a kiss. And sitting there, watching it, I thought that Pat didn't kiss like a guy. Pat kissed like a girl."[13]

Aired March 20, 1993 (Season 18, Episode 16). In a spoof of the movie The Crying Game, Pat sings the title song.[14]

Aired on May 14, 1994 (Season 19, Episode 20). Pat appears at the end of the episode, alongside other recurring characters, singing "So Long, Farewell".

Years after the sketches aired, Joey Soloway said they felt the premise and character were painful to non-binary and transgender people.[16] Responding to Soloway's comments in 2019, Sweeney acknowledged that today "you would not make fun of somebody for being that way" and that the character was a bygone of "a whole other world."[17]

The 2019 Showtime television show Work in Progress has suggested that the character was troublesome to non-binary and transgender people.[18]

Pat meets Chris, another sexually-ambiguous character, played by Dave Foley. (On SNL, Chris had been played by Dana Carvey.) They quickly fall in love, and they propose to each other at exactly the same time. Before the wedding, Chris breaks up with Pat due to Pat's arrogance and lack of direction in life; Pat has a brief stint in a rock band, and Pat starts to believe that they are going to be an overnight celebrity. Meanwhile, Pat has become an object of obsession of a neighbor (Charles Rocket), who is so determined to discover Pat's sex that he goes insane. Pat's sex is never revealed in the film. At the end of the film, Pat and Chris are reunited, and, in an epilogue, they marry.

Sweeney helped co-write It's Pat!: My Life Exposed, a book which coincided with the film's release. Pat's sex is not revealed within its 96 pages.