In 1998, then-Entertainment
Weekly TV critic Ken Tucker wrote a piece where he called out Comedy Central for its frat-house boorishness, a network where you could find Bill
Maher calling female guests "baby" or "sweetie" on "Politically Incorrect," an equally-smug broadcaster named Craig
Kilborn hurling mean-spirited jabs (and sexist comments at his female bosses)
as the anchorman of this new satire program called "The Daily Show," and four
foul-mouthed kids indulging in low-brow humor and sacred cow-skewering on "South Park." And keep in mind this
was a year-and-a-half before Jimmy Kimmel and Adam Carolla would jerk up the
joint as the boobs-and-booze-loving hosts of "The Man Show." "… [Former] Comedy Central president and CEO Doug
Herzog could chisel a credo over the door to his office: Home of Wisecracks and
Butt Cracks," Tucker wrote.
Yes, Comedy Central was
a den of dickishness back in the day, and it still is. But, these days, it
appears women are slinging out dick jokes and other lewd/crude/rude behavior
just as often as the men. It hasn't been a complete gender reversal: "South Park" is still alive and
kicking. Daniel Tosh remains the network's alpha tool, mercilessly putting many
a viral-video numbskull on blast over at "Tosh.0." On a nightly basis, Trevor Noah and Larry Wilmore
strive to prove their just as worthy of delivering the fake news as their
beloved predecessors. And those "Workaholics" continue
to do whatever the hell they do on their wacky workplace comedy.
As of late, the channel
has been giving more female comedians and performers the chance to be front and
center. It didn't happen overnight. Even though the network has had several female
programming heads over the years, shows featuring female leads or catering to female
audiences always seemed an odd occurrence. And when one did show up, like the
simply-won't-die Brit import "Absolutely
Fabulous" or the simply dead-and-gone "The Sarah Silverman Program," the media went overboard treating
it like a gift from the heavens.
Of course, this increase
in girl power wouldn't have happened if Amy Schumer and the duo of Ilana Glazer & Abbi Jacobson didn't also become media darlings. Thanks to the critical and
commercial success of their respective shows—"Inside Amy Schumer" and "Broad
City"—these ladies are the kind of ballsy personalities that
could toss an off-color quip, booze and toke it up with utter lack of shame
and make the Comedy Central's male demographic putty in their hands.
Even though Schumer is
officially a star thanks to writing and starring in last summer's box-office
hit "Trainwreck," the Emmy-winner has decided not to pull a "Chappelle's Show" and duck out of doing a fourth
season of her skitcom. If anything, her newfound prominence as a major player
has given her more confidence in going after targets, her claws fully
sharpened. One recent episode had her slamming pro-gun America (an issue very
personal to her, since a shooting happened during a showing of her movie last
year), starting off with a semi-preachy sketch where she sells guns on a
QVC-style program ("These make perfect stocking stuffers!") and later doing an
interview with a gun control advocate. Men continue to take the most beatings
from Schumer, whether they're Twitter trolls terrorizing women, senators
watching over women's health or husbands who can't stop nailing their nannies.
Schumer still gets a lot of comic mileage out of being the butt of the joke. So
far this season, she's made quite the entertaining spectacle of herself by
doing a pitiful hip-hopera about Betsy Ross in front of "Hamilton" wunderkind Lin-Manuel
Miranda and trying to do a "Game
of Thrones" scene while freaking the hell out on a horse.
It seems Schumer has
enough pull now at the CC offices to have them give her previous collaborators, like Nikki
Glaser, Rachel Feinstein and cabaret singer/force of nature Bridget
Everett, their own specials, usually tagged with an "Amy Schumer Presents"
before the title. Glaser got even more opportunity to shine when the
channel gave her a show, "Not
Safe with Nikki Glaser," earlier this year. A weekly roundup of
sex-related hijinks, the show is a collection of ribald film pieces, where
Glaser engages in fearlessly randy bits like asking her parents questions about
their sex lives while they're strapped to a lie-detector machine or getting a
group of guys together to take ornate dick pics, and bull sessions with her
comic friends, which always seems forced and clumsy. The show excels whenever
Glaser is just on her own, being as nasty as she wants to be.
The ladies of "Broad
City" just completed their third season, racking up a lot of guests (what up, Hillary!) to join them in
their urban, millennial misadventures. Jacobson and Glazer bravely give zero
fucks as they mock our hipster-heavy times by being as shamelessly
self-absorbed and slackerific as they can. But as dorky and dirty as Jacobson
and Glazer can be, I've been finding myself gravitating over to a new pair of
estrogen-fueled hellraisers who've shown up to the party.
Earlier this year, the
channel premiered "Idiotsitter,"
an amusingly dimwitted show that's practically a West Coast version of "Broad City." "Workaholics" alum Jillian Bell plays a spoiled woman-child
on house arrest who finds a new gal pal in the woman (Charlotte Newhouse) who's
been hired by her parents to home-school her as well as keep tabs on her. Bell
and Newhouse, who both created the show as a web series (just like "Broad City"), basically put a feminine
spin on those Chris Farley-David Spade comedies of the ‘90s and make a
relentlessly giggle-worthy sitcom out of it. Bell is a consistent,
cherubic-faced fountain of inappropriate remarks—her character practically has
a comic form of Tourette's—while Newhouse serves as the spunky straight-woman,
keeping a level-headed yet incessantly neurotic head on her shoulders.
There's also "Another Period," a bitchy spoof which
premiered last summer and reimagines "Downton Abbey" as the sort of reality-show meltdown center
you'd usually see on Bravo. Comediennes/creators Natasha Leggero and Riki
Lindhome (one-half of the adorable, musical-comedy duo Garfunkel and Oates, who
had an unfortunately short-lived show on IFC a couple of years back) play the
divalicious sisters at the heart of this early-19th century,
upstairs/downstairs farce, where a wealthy, ass-backwards family often puts
their long-suffering staff of servants (which includes "Mad Men"'s Christina Hendricks,
who plays a housemaid named Chair) through the usual have/have-not
drama. These period-piece shenanigans must've made Comedy Central very happy—they
gave the show a second season, starting next month.
The increase of
on-screen women over at Comedy Central (even the recently announced lineup of comics for their half-hour stand-up specials has a nice smattering of funny ladies) proves once and for all that today's TV audiences
aren't hung up on the generations-old belief that women aren't funny. Both the
network and their audience know that women can bring the comic noise as
frequently as the dudes, whether it's smart, stinging satire or R-rated dumb
humor. It doesn't matter if you're man or a woman—if you can come
with the wisecracks and butt cracks, you'll always have a home at Comedy
Central.
