SNL spoofs surprise Netflix hit The Hunting Wives

You know a show has crossed into the pop-culture mainstream when it lands a spoof on Saturday Night Live. And that’s exactly what’s happened to Netflix’s glossy murder melodrama^[1] The Hunting Wives.

For the uninitiated, the show follows Brittany Snow (played here by Chloe Fineman) as a young woman from the East Coast who relocates to East Texas with her husband after a deadly drunk-driving accident. Once there, she becomes infatuated with her husband’s boss, played in the real series by Malin Akerman — and by Amy Poehler in the sketch — as the two spiral into a mess of drugs, secrets, and a young girl’s murder.

It’s got all the ingredients of a deliciously trashy Netflix hit, somewhere between You and Yellowstone. But what it’s really famous for — and what SNL zeroes in on — is just how gay the whole thing is. “Millions of Americans tuned into season one of The Hunting Wives, the straight-but-lesbian, horny Republican murder drama,” the sketch’s narrator declares.

The parody nails every hallmark of the show: the overly sensual “teaching moments” between the lead women, gratuitous thigh-touching, terrible wigs, and — because it’s still a sudsy thriller at heart — wildly inappropriate relationships between adults and barely legal teens.

Even Aubrey Plaza pops up as a new arrival to the neighborhood, an actual lesbian whose presence isn’t exactly welcomed by the Hunting Wives themselves.