Editor's Picks
As Kristen Wiig departs “SNL,” what’s next for women?
"Saturday Night Live" says goodbye to a star -- and leaves late night without a queen
Mick Jagger and Kristen Wiig during the season finale of "Saturday Night Live" What, you didn’t get to dance with Mick Jagger, hug Jon Hamm and be serenaded by Arcade Fire the last time you left a job? I guess you’re not Kristen Wiig.
After seven years on “SNL,” Wiig said goodbye on Saturday night’s season finale that will go down as one of the sweetest, most choked-up moments on the show since Steve Martin said goodbye to Gilda Radner on the day of her death almost exactly 23 years earlier.
Even without an official announcement, Wiig’s twirly, teary departure is enough to make even the most casual fans of the show crank up the Adele and mainline a tub of Edy’s Grand. It doesn’t matter that fellow castmates Andy Samberg and Jason Sudeikis have reportedly moved on from the show as well. They leave behind established male cast members like Seth Meyers, Fred Armisen and Bill Hader. Wiig, on the other hand, blows a gaping hole in the show’s female lineup. The 24-year-old Abby Elliott, who moves up the rung to the show’s senior lady cast member, is now its biggest female star. But she’s yet to display that versatility or command the clout that Wiig has. Kate McKinnon may yet bust out into full-blown “SNL” stardom, but she’s only been on the show for five minutes.
And so, after years of cultivating a stunning roster of formidable female talent — Tina Fey, Maya Rudolph, Amy Poehler and Wiig — the show is, for the moment anyway, back to a state of relative desolation it hasn’t seen since the ’90s, an era that reached its nadir when Janeane Garofalo bailed midseason. It’s a strange, disconnected moment for “SNL,” right as women are making grand enough strides in television and film comedy that we’ve magically attained “labia saturation.” And though Wiig will no doubt continue to dominate in movies as a writer and performer, it’s sad that she leaves behind no true heirs on a show that, especially in an election year, remains so influential.
Visibly emotional and flanked by current cast members as well as the likes of Chris Kattan, Rachel Dratch, Steve Martin and Chris Parnell, and an especially rollicking Amy Poehler, new alumna Wiig didn’t depart “SNL” alone. She took with her Gilly, the tiny-handed Judice, Target Lady, Suze Orman and even Tan Mom. Why were so many people red-eyed on Saturday? Because on the stage that night stood a woman with incredibly big shoes to fill – and one very small hat.
Mary Elizabeth Williams is a staff writer for Salon and the author of "Gimme Shelter: My Three Years Searching for the American Dream." Follow her on Twitter: @embeedub. More Mary Elizabeth Williams.
What’s “Community” without Dan Harmon?
Less ambitious shows might survive losing a creator. But firing the prickly showrunner bodes poorly for next season
Dan Harmon (Credit: AP/Matt Sayles) A recent episode of NBC’s “Community” floated the possibility — debunked by episode’s end — that the seven main characters had not spent the previous three years navigating life, each other and paintball fights at Greendale Community College, but instead, had only been imagining them. In the episode, the recently expelled Greendale Seven found themselves in a group therapy session with a nefarious shrink, keen to keep them away from their college using any psychological means necessary. The therapist temporarily convinced them they had spent the previous years in a mental institution and that everything they remembered happening at school, except their friendship, had been a collective fantasy, a “shared psychosis” dreamed up in the asylum.
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Willa Paskin is Salon's staff TV writer. More Willa Paskin.
Our most dangerous hike
When a casual excursion turned dangerous, I didn't know if it would end my relationship, or define it
(Credit: Blazej Lyjak via Shutterstock) At 6 years old, I reluctantly joined my Brownie troop on an all-day hike into the woods, and two days later, my appendix burst. I blamed the woods. Maybe it was the grit at the bottom of my Thermos, which my troop leader had told me to ignore. Maybe my appendix was allergic to the outdoors. (“Maybe it’s because you suck on your hair,” my mom said, a habit she regularly predicted would lead to my ruin.) Soon after, I quit Brownies and never went hiking again.
Until age 26. I was in a faltering relationship with a man who loved hiking and camping, and who sincerely believed that I would love these activities too, if he could be my guide.
Continue Reading CloseTania James' new book of stories "Aerogrammes" is now out from Knopf. She is the author of a novel "Atlas of Unknowns," and her writing has appeared in Boston Review, Granta, Kenyon Review, One Story, Orion, and The New York Times. Visit her at www.taniajames.com or on Twitter at @taniajam. More Tania James.
“People Who Eat Darkness”: The disappearing blonde
A true crime story set in Tokyo illuminates the complicated truths behind media cliches
Joji Obara and Lucie Blackman (Credit: Estate of Lucie Jane Blackman) Lucie Blackman, 21, went out for the afternoon in 2000, phoning her roommate and best friend Louise to arrange a meeting later that night. Lucie never showed up, and within a few days she’d become one of those vanished blondes whose fates fuel headlines and hours of speculative media coverage. She was British, a former flight attendant, and she and Louise were living in Tokyo. They were also bar hostesses, a profession with a very specific meaning in Japan, difficult to explain to foreigners and not entirely clear to the Japanese themselves. Lucie both did and didn’t match the classic Missing Blonde profile, and for a while the mystery of what happened to her threatened to lapse into permanent obscurity.
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Laura Miller is a senior writer for Salon. She is the author of "The Magician's Book: A Skeptic's Adventures in Narnia" and has a Web site, magiciansbook.com. More Laura Miller.
What’s the matter with Nebraska?
Forget Article IV of the Constitution! Isn't it about time we stop pretending that all states are created equal?
Kevin Bleyer I once drove through Nebraska, via I-80, days after my girlfriend broke up with me, on a self-imposed road trip from Los Angeles to Cedar Rapids to find my brother’s shoulder and cry on it. It is a long, straight, hypnotically boring drive that not only gave me ample time to think about the loss, but also put my recent heartbreak in much-needed perspective.
It could be worse, I realized. I could live here.
Cold comfort, perhaps, but comfort nonetheless. And so, for providing the enforced monotony that only a dull road trip can provide, and the bleak void to which to compare my own relatively full life, I am grateful to the state of Nebraska. Nebraska has a special place in my heart.
Continue Reading CloseA night at the vibrator museum
Early vibrators were hand-cranked, two-person jobs -- and prescribed by doctors. How far we've come since then
(Credit: Antique Vibrator Museum) I can now say that I’ve used a turn-of-the-century vibrator — on my hand, but still.
The silver, hand-cranked contraption is usually kept behind glass at Good Vibrations’ Antique Vibrator Museum in San Francisco — but staff sexologist Carol Queen made a rare exception. “This is very special,” she whispered, unlocking the case and carefully pulling out Dr. Johansen’s Auto Vibrator, a relic from 1904. The “auto” part is not so much: It was a two-person job, with her having to crank the device’s handle to get it thrumming. Pressing my finger tips to its inch-wide circular platform of pleasure, I was pleasantly surprised by its power.
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Tracy Clark-Flory is a staff writer at Salon. Follow @tracyclarkflory on Twitter. More Tracy Clark-Flory.
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