What medication clears up plaque psoriasis and is recommended by most dermatologists, but also can’t be defeated or understood, has cropped up periodically throughout human history and is unaffected by our perception of time? According to “Saturday Night Live,” that’s Amgen’s Otezla.
The sketch show’s latest pharma ad spoof arrived during this past weekend’s episode hosted by actor Ryan Gosling, who also appears in the Otezla send-up as a patient now able to shed his long sleeves after treating his plaque psoriasis with the med.
The clip is structured like a standard drug ad, with psoriasis patients praising Otezla while engaging in cheerful, everyday activities—playing frisbee, going out dancing and working in a classroom—and with more information provided by a company spokesperson standing against a bright yellow background.
The sketch starts off as a simple riff on a line found in many actual Otezla ads noting that the oral medication is not a cream or an injection. Things go off the rails from there, as the spoof spokesperson, played by “SNL” cast member Ashley Padilla, admits that “we don’t know what Otezla is or how it got here, and we don’t know what it wants.”
“It looks like a pill, but that may be what Otezla wants us to believe,” one of the patients, cast member Sarah Sherman, chimes in. “On security footage, when humans look away, it becomes something else.”
Other crucial information shared in the ad relays that Otezla “has no known weaknesses or vulnerabilities,” can’t be created or destroyed and “appears to be moving through time differently than we are, so our future is its past.”
That may explain another segment of the spot, in which depictions of Otezla’s packaging show up throughout human history: in cave drawings, on J. Robert Oppenheimer’s chalkboard, at the moon landing.
“Otezla has been with us before, always right before a major leap in civilization, perhaps nudging humanity forward,” Padilla notes.
It could be the drug’s way of inspiring its own creation—or of bringing the human race under its control, according to the ad.
The faux commercial wraps up with the usual readout of risk information.
In this case, however, the typical warning about a possible drug allergy comes with Gosling’s note that if you’re allergic to Otezla, “you may be the key—the secret weapon we need to fight back.”
And a disclaimer about not taking Otezla while pregnant, nursing or taking other plaque psoriasis medications is appended by a specific caution about another med known for its ads.
“Otezla is either working with or the mortal enemy of Skyrizi. It’s possible that one has been sent to protect us and one to kill us,” Sherman says, while Padilla adds, “If one molecule of Otezla touched one molecule of Skyrizi, space and time would collapse.”
In one final jab at ubiquitous pharma ads, the clip ends with a suspiciously familiar jingle for Amgen’s med: “Oh, oh, oh, Otezla,” a voiceover croons, borrowing the melody from a certain drug that was previously the subject of yet another “SNL” parody commercial.