This Week's "SNL" Shows the Steamy Side of Real Estate

The latest commercial parody to air on Saturday Night Live had a very specific target in mind: people in their late 30s who sublimate their libidos in, shall we say, unexpected directions. Or, as one line from the sketch put it: “Real estate is your sex now.” And what better way to demonstrate that than an ad for Zillow done in the style of a phone sex commercial, complete with gauzy lighting and unimpressive font choices.

Various cast members, along with host Dan Levy, do their best to look enraptured by “mature landscaping,” inexpensive North Carolina mansions and guest houses with little kitchens. (Bowen Yang’s reaction to the last of these is flat-out hysterical.) It’s a sketch that knows its audience very well.

“The pleasure you once got from sex now comes from looking at…other people’s houses,” Ego Nwodim whispers late in the sketch. It feels deeply spot-on, both in the insight at the heart of the joke and the aesthetics of the parody. Some SNL commercial parodies are memorable for how flat-out weird they are; this one took a different route.

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Tobias Carroll

Tobias Carroll lives and writes in New York City, and has been covering a wide variety of subjects — including (but not limited to) books, soccer and drinks — for many years. His writing has been published by the likes of the Los Angeles Times, Pitchfork, Literary Hub, Vulture, Punch, the New York Times and Men’s Journal. At InsideHook, he has…