Photo: Matthew Peyton / Comedy Central
Is It Worth Getting Inside Amy Schumer?
...What? If they didn't want people making jokes like that, they should have called it something else!
Show: Inside Amy Schumer.
Premiered: April 2013.
Why Was It Made? Schumer is a comic on the rise after a couple of successful appearances on The Comedy Central Roast (of Charlie Sheen and Roseanne). And since that's how Whitney Cummings got her start, before going on to create a phenomenally successful sitcom (...and another one that was not so successful, but still, it got on the air for two seasons), perhaps someone at Comedy Central wanted to get into the Amy Schumer business before she totally blew up. (Schumer also had a well-received Comedy Central special in 2012.)
Why Didn't I Watch? I like to laugh, and by the time Schumer's show premiered last year, I had already gotten all the way on board with Comedy Central's sketch shows Key & Peele and Kroll Show. But the series premiere repelled me -- and I mean I felt like it pushed me away, as if it had a forcefield around it. By the time it got to a "2 Girls 1 Cup" spoof (note: that's a link TO THE SPOOF, not the real video) -- which, first of all, in 2013? and second: gross -- I felt pretty sure this show was not for me.
Why Give It A Shot? I heard over the course of the first season that after a sensationalistic first episode, it got better and could stand alongside Comedy Central's other great sketch shows.
What Aspects Of The Latest Episode Would Seem To Invite Further Viewing? The first sketch after the credits is...this. Which I loved.
That "Shrimp U Been Prawn" joke at the start is just the kind of dumb throwaway I love, and then this show's version of God is played by Paul Giamatti? YES. He's so dry and disappointed and hearing Schumer's voice come out of him is the best. He also gets an extra outtake over the closing credits that's even more delightful.
What Aspects Of The Latest Episode Discourage Further Viewing? The premise of the Giamatti sketch above -- that Schumer has herpes and doesn't want to admit it to herself -- is the best execution of what kind of ends up being the show's one joke: that Amy acts out sexually due to low self-esteem and/or that her bad opinion of herself is corroborated by the general public. For instance: the episode's cold open is a focus group in which a bunch of guys don't review her show so much as her, in particular her C- "dumper." There's definitely comedy to be mined from the way gender inequality affects sexual politics, but Schumer's schtick just feels like the 2010s version of the relentlessly self-deprecating humour of Joan Rivers or Phyllis Diller in the '60s; she's just as horny and (in her own telling) sexually unappealing, except unlike her foremothers, when Schumer describes all the things men don't want to do to her, she gets to use bad words.
Final Verdict: I have noooooo problem with comedy that calls itself feminist and revolves around sex. But on Broad City, the ladies know they're hot as hell (...even when they aren't), and they get it on the reg. Sorry, Amy! You're just a foul-mouthed Cathy.