Why You Need To Be Watching ‘Inside Amy Schumer’

You know how you can go from not knowing anything about someone or something to being their/it’s biggest fan? This has happened to me twice in the last few week’s: I’m currently fawning over Elisabeth Moss (it JUST hit me how GOOD she is on Mad Men) but I went from never hearing about Amy Schumer to marathoning her show.

Amy Schumer is everything Whitney Cummings thinks she is and the networks wanted her to be, but she, for some reason, sold her show to NBC which was a terrible decision. Amy Schumer is the darling of Comedy Central, and at the moment, the only lady on the network. That’s hopefully going to change. But this isn’t a conversation about female comics, this is about how good Amy’s show, Inside Amy Schumer, is.

So rarely are these kind of shows so fully realized. Inside Amy Schumer is everything I wanted Portlandia to be. They’re not entirely comparable, I get that, and it’s maybe more like The Kroll Show than anything else, but even better. My problem with sketch shows is that if I don’t like a particular sketch, I’m not going to want to see it played out over an entire season. Amy’s sketches are limited in character work, but driven in fully realizing her standup routine and it works so, so well. The show work’s in 3 parts if you’ve never seen it: it’s part sketch, part stand-up (which is usually an introduction to the sketch that follows, and the sketch mirrors the stand-up), part interview and part informal (her moments with people on the street  are always my favourite). Don’t like a certain sketch? Don’t worry, it’ll be done soon and something completely different will follow.

Inside Amy Schumer is fully realized because it’s exactly what it needs to be and you can tell how much work and time has gone into each show and sketch. Now, Schumer’s stand-up is mainly about sex, so the show is also mainly about sex but not all the time. It is a little overbearing but I’m okay with that because it’s my kind of humour,  if that isn’t your thing you might want to stay away. If you know nothing about her this clip from her special is a great place to start, if you like it, well, you’re welcome and I like gift cards.