'Inside Amy Schumer': Maybe Outside is Close Enough
Amy Schumer's stand-up act, which often skews funny, strings together slice-of-life bits about awkward sex and dating, punctuated by the blonde, girl-next-door-type going way-down raunchy in the punch lines. As she curses and scats sex phrases, it's sort of like watching a wide-eyed muppet go hard into the Christopher Walken rant from Pulp Fiction.
While Schumer's new Comedy Central sketch-comedy show, Inside Amy Schumer, which premieres Tuesday, April 30 at 10:30 p.m. ET, includes bits of her routine, the bulk of it is pretty much downhill from there. Much like The Sarah Silverman Program (2007-2010), The League and others, the show is a stream of bodily fluid references from start to finish.
Inside Amy Schumer starts with a satire of a casting call for a proposed knock-off of the infamous scat-porn YouTube video, "2 Girls 1 Cup," which featured two women sharing a cup of, presumably, human excrement. That's followed by a stand-up bit about taking the morning-after pill the night of; a sketch about a one-night stand with a boorish guy who gets aroused by and masturbates to the matronly model featured on a pasta sauce bottle label; and a spoof of first-person survival stories, including one about two brothers stranded at sea who were forced to drink each other's pee to survive.
If none of this sounds funny, it isn't, and that's a bit of mystery given Schumer's steady rise through the stand-up circuit and the rave reviews she received for her performances at the Comedy Central roasts for Charlie Sheen in 2011 and Roseanne Barr in 2012. Those appearances led to Schumer's own highly-rated one-hour Comedy Central special, Mostly Sex Stuff, last year.
It's even harder to fathom if you read last week's lengthy background piece about the show in The New York Times, which delved into Schumer's comedy in intricate, scholarly detail. And while the piece praises Schumer's comedy, there's nothing provocative or illuminating in the premiere episode of Inside Amy Schumer, unless you find a chat about women who prank guys by asking them to email "dick pics" particularly funny.
The Times piece also mentions that Schumer's show was originally intended to be a talk show, but she instead insisted on doing a sketch series, saying, "I want to do my Louie."
Would that it were as simple, or easy, by just wanting to do a show like Louie. Sure, Louis C.K. incessantly jokes about jerking off, but it's against, and across, the whole spectrum of human narcissism and frailty.
Schumer's just as smart, but so far she seems happy enough to ride the one trick pony, playing the good-looking, wholesome girl with a cowboy mouth.