SALON

Tuesday, Apr 30, 2013 3:20 PM UTC

“Inside Amy Schumer,” a female-centric take on bro-comedy

Comedy Central's new sketch show is original only in flashes

By

Topics: Amy Schumer, Inside Amy Schumer, TV, Television, comedy central,

(Credit: Comedy Central)

Amy Schumer’s new sketch comedy show “Inside Amy Schumer” begins tonight on Comedy Central, a female-centric take on bro-comedy, raunchy and dedicated to exploring the ways girls can be crazy. Her persona combines Whitney Cummings’ bawdiness and Mindy Kaling’s entitlement with a self-proclaimed slutty streak (“I am sluttier than your average bear,” she proclaims), a familiar combination that feels original only in flashes. Schumer is sharper than her material.

In one sketch, Schumer plays a girl who starts to plan a wedding with a one-night stand who barely knows her name, going so far as to buy them side-by-side funeral plots. A clueless woman behaving insanely because she’s so desperate for a relationship is both an easy target and an archetype we’ve seen before. (In another sketch, Schumer sits on the couch stuffing pasta in her face, sending unsexy text messages to a dude who gets off anyway. If I never have to see a fictional woman stuffing carbs into her face, it will be too soon.) But Schumer adds a grace note at the very end that should have been the focus of the whole bit: The woman in question is totally unflappable, unperturbed when the guy doesn’t know who she is, moving on immediately to the next dude. She’s not just pathetic, she’s also obliviously overconfident.

This sort of blithe self-satisfaction is a big part of Schumer’s sketch humor. In the best sketch of the first two episodes, Schumer plays a horror show of self-involvement. Three characters share traumatic experiences for a show called “I Endured …” Michael Showalter plays a man whose arms have been pecked off by owls at the Harry Potter theme park; another man’s brother died after they went overboard on a Weezer cruise; Schumer suffered through … a standard airplane flight. “In a 9/11-like twist they didn’t have any chardonnay,” she says, her voice cracking, “and they offered me a pinot!”

In contrast, Schumer’s stand-up, which is threaded throughout the episode, is not ditzy at all, but explicit and matter-of-fact. Schumer riffs only on sex and sex-related subjects, including her familiarity with plan B and her pharmacist’s judgment, women’s lack of interest in having their boyfriends cum on their faces, and how all women have been “a little raped.” (“There’s a gray area of rape,” she says. “It’s not just black and white. Grape happens.”) She is blonde and baby-faced and she gets mileage out of the juxtaposition of her sweet looks and her blue material, a disjunction that has been used to even more startling effect by Sarah Silverman. The poster for “Inside Amy Schumer” (and that title should definitely be read as dirty) has her smiling, seemingly unaware of the fact that her breasts are hanging out of her dress.

“Inside Amy Schumer” also mixes in lackluster man-on-the-street interviews, usually related to a sketch (“Have you ever had a one night stand?” etc.), as well as a longer interview with a real person, first a model and then a stripper. Why a model and a stripper? “Inside Amy Schumer” has a problem not dissimilar to that of lady blogs across the Internet, which begin with the goal of having women write about any and every subject, and slowly, self-selectingly narrow their purview to “women’s subjects.” Schumer can do anything she wants, but she’s curated her sketches and interviews to be about “female” topics, and not just any “female” topics, but ones that could appeal to Comedy Central’s male audience — thus the model and the stripper and the sketches about sex and crazy chicks, Two Girls One Cup, and a Hooters reimagined as a Nutters. Schumer obviously prides herself on being straightforward and edgy, but she’s inadvertently narrowed “Inside Amy Schumer’s” scope.

Willa Paskin

Willa Paskin is Salon's staff TV writer. More Willa Paskin.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • This photo. President Barack Obama has a laugh during the unveiling of the George W. Bush Presidential Center in Dallas, Tx., Thursday. Former first lady Barbara Bush, who candidly admitted this week we've had enough Bushes in the White House, is unamused.
    Reuters/Jason Reed

  • Rescue workers converge Wednesday in Savar, Bangladesh, where the collapse of a garment building killed more than 300. Factory owners had ignored police orders to vacate the work site the day before.
    AP/A.M. Ahad

  • Police gather Wednesday at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to honor campus officer Sean Collier, who was allegedly killed in a shootout with the Boston Marathon bombing suspects last week.
    AP/Elise Amendola

  • Police tape closes the site of a car bomb that targeted the French embassy in Libya Tuesday. The explosion wounded two French guards and caused extensive damage to Tripoli's upscale al-Andalus neighborhood.
    AP/Abdul Majeed Forjani

  • Protestors rage outside the residence of Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh Sunday following the rape of a 5-year-old girl in New Delhi. The girl was allegedly kidnapped and tortured before being abandoned in a locked room for two days.
    AP/Manish Swarup

  • Clarksville, Mo., residents sit in a life boat Monday after a Mississippi River flooding, the 13th worst on record.
    AP/Jeff Roberson

  • Workers pause Wednesday for a memorial service at the site of the West, Tx., fertilizer plant explosion, which killed 14 people and left a crater more than 90 feet wide.
    AP/The San Antonio Express-News, Tom Reel

  • Aerial footage of the devastation following a 7.0 magnitude earthquake in China's Sichuan province last Saturday. At least 180 people were killed and as many as 11,000 injured in the quake.
    AP/Liu Yinghua

  • On Wednesday, Hazmat-suited federal authorities search a martial arts studio in Tupelo, Miss., once operated by Everett Dutschke, the newest lead in the increasingly twisty ricin case. Last week, President Barack Obama, Sen. Roger Wicker, R.-Miss., and a Mississippi judge were each sent letters laced with the deadly poison.
    AP/Rogelio V. Solis

  • The lighting of Freedom Hall at the George W. Bush Presidential Center Thursday is celebrated with (what else but) red, white and blue fireworks.
    AP/David J. Phillip

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments

 3 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username ( profile | log out )

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

vote
Facebook has been used to find ex-lovers, childhood BFFs or the one who got away. He used it to find the guy who, without his consent, made him his drug mule.
204 points205 points | 19 comments
vote
“This could be a career ender for Michele Bachmann”
120 points121 points | 39 comments
vote
Would we give up burgers to stop climate change? New study suggests if we reduce our intake of animal products by 25%, we can halt climate change
111 points112 points | 49 comments
vote
Poll: 3 in 10 voters say “armed revolution might be necessary” - 29% say they believe they'll have to act "in order to protect our liberties" in the next few years
45 points46 points | 16 comments
vote
Capitalism, not feminism, killed home cooking–and fixing our broken food system is gonna take a lot more than some privileged women embracing “new domesticity”
31 points32 points | 19 comments

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: "The Shelter Cycle": Raised in a cult

Recommendations