With The White Lotus star Aubrey Plaza hosting Saturday Night Live, the sketch series hilariously spoofed the popular anthology with a new show: The Black Lotus. On the surface, The Black Lotus mirrors the real HBO series as it follows wealthy vacationing tourists, only at this resort, the staff “has no time for this nonsense.” The skit begins with Chloe Fineman reprising her Jennifer Coolidge impression as she checks into the resort. When she realizes she has forgotten her credit card, she asks the hotel concierge (played by Kenan Thompson) if he can trust her enough to allow her to pay later.
“No I can’t. I don’t know you! I’m trying to run a business!” he says.
At the White Lotus resort, drama hinges on what lurks in the unspoken, but at the Black Lotus, things swing in the opposite direction to create comedy that relies on the amplification of the obvious. When the spoofed Michael Imperioli asks for hotel keys for a pair of women he hopes will be able to “come and go as they please,” the Black Lotus employees lack the kind of subtleties the White Lotus may have afforded him.
“Hey, William! Give these hoes a spare key to the room,” concierge Ego Nwodim shouts across the hotel lobby. “Everybody! Treat these hoes like they’re regular people.”
Many of the White Lotus guests are spoofed, including Tanya’s assistant, Portia, and her love interest Jack, as well as Dominic, the son of Michael Imperioli’s character. Plaza herself takes on a new role as an impatient bartender.
Plaza’s work inspired the sketches throughout the entire episode, with an opening monologue that revisited her time as an NBC page, a Parks and Recreation reprisal featuring Amy Poehler, and even an unexpected White Lotus reference in an equally hilarious M3gan skit.
In a trailer for an upcoming sequel to the hit sci-fi horror M3gan, Plaza embodies the second iteration of the robot doll, M3gan 2.0. The trailer says Megan 2.0 will be “just like Bros, but for the gays.“
In the skit, we watch Plaza-as-robot-doll “giving life” to a group of gay men in a nightclub. It ends with a cameo from Allison Williams and all the “hungry sluts” at the club dance to the infamous White Lotus theme song.
Which was your favorite SNL spoof: The Black Lotus or M3gan 2.0? Grade the episode below, then let us know in the comments.
