New This Week

• Stanning Amy Schumer.
• Stanning Jennifer Coolidge.
• Stanning Grey Poupon.
• Stanning Tony Danza.
• Stanning Tinky Winky.

The New Inside Amy Schumer Season Is Great

Two words made me laugh harder than anything I’ve seen on TV did this year: “Fart Park.”

I’m cracking up again just from typing them. Fart Park!

On Inside Amy Schumer, which launched its fifth season Thursday on Paramount+, Schumer plays a character who stumbles upon Fart Park. It’s a gated section of Washington Square Park, “part of a city-wide initiative, judgment-free zones where people can go fart outside.” We see people sheepishly milling about the lawn, staring at the ground and kicking some grass to kill time as they take care of business. “That’s what’s going on in there? Everyone’s just farting?” Schumer asks. “Hopefully,” a stranger replies. “We’ve seen some accidents.”

The camera zeroes in on the hunter green parks department sign that’s familiar to New Yorkers. Over the usual circle-enshrouded leaf, it reads in stark letters: “FART PARK.” There’s an outrageousness to the mundanity of it all. I’m laughing again.

If you’ve seen Inside Amy Schumer, the Emmy-winning comedy series that made Schumer a star, you know that the sketch doesn’t end by solely making the perfectly alliterative joke. (“All fart and no bite, as we like to say around here,” is another gem.) It escalates into outlandish territory: Schumer falls in love with a fellow farter, there’s a murder in Fart Park, and she becomes a famous author after writing about it. “I had a moment where I was like…I don’t think we need a murder at Fart Park,” Schumer later says in a video explaining the origins of the sketch. “And everybody was like, you’re an idiot, Amy. There has to be a murder at Fart Park.”  

Juvenile as we are, we giggle every time we see the words “Fart Park.” But it’s not necessarily the best sketch of the two Season 5 episodes that premiered this week. And it’s certainly not the most important. It will likely get passed around and shared, and will absolutely enter the lexicon. (As if I will ever pass a park in New York City now without mentioning “Fart Park.”) It’s a more genial, accessible example of Schumer’s comedy, which, as the new season of Inside Amy Schumer proves, is more pointed, more political, and more uncomfortable than ever before.

The fifth season of Inside Amy Schumer was actually greenlit in January 2016. That’s quite a time stamp; suffice it to say that it was a much different world then. There was no Paramount+, for starters. I only cried once a week compared to once an hour; I don’t think I had even started my daily screaming-into-a-pillow yet. It would be trite to detail the social and political change that has happened, or the trauma we’ve all weathered. In the years since, Schumer herself has gotten married, had a child, become a passionate activist, and cemented her status as a lightning rod in comedy.

Ever the lemming, I’ve joined the legions of people who, in recent years, have relied on television for comfort. I might as well be president of the Basic Bitch Convention, with my ecstatic embrace of “nice TV” like Schitt’s Creek, Abbott Elementary, and Ted Lasso. I rolled my eyes at everyone’s marathon watches of The Office and Gilmore Girls during the pandemic to soothe themselves. I’m far more sophisticated; I rewatched 30 Rock and Sex and the City. “Who has the time or the desire to watch something as dark and depraved as House of the Dragon?” I said to myself as I settled down to watch my ninth Bravo show of the week—which I followed up by turning on an episode of Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives that I’ve already seen. Four times.

There’s nothing wrong with craving pop culture that makes you feel good when everything else is terrible. I’m actually grateful for a shift back toward earnestness in comedy, even if the real-world catalyst for the trend was so bleak. But watching the new season of Inside Amy Schumer was interesting because it reminded me of what was so gratifying about a certain kind of television that we had run away from or flat-out rejected. Schumer is as skilled as ever at making comedy that challenges, at finding jokes in the things that are woefully unpleasant about life. 

It goes without saying that, glancing at the male-dominated sketch-comedy landscape, Schumer’s perspective is distinct. There are memorable sketches in the first two episodes revolving around the pressure to wear Spanx, being the only woman working at a tampon company, and feeling the need to justify procedures women have done in order to live up to unrealistic beauty standards. She’s also fearlessly political.

“Colorado” satirizes the kind of commercial that tourism boards make to attract visitors. In it, Schumer’s singing the praises of a place that is beautiful and definitely worth visiting, especially if you happen to live in a surrounding state that has banned abortion. It’s merciless, more so if you let yourself ponder the reality that a state really could—and maybe even should—make an advertisement like this. 

There’s another sketch in which female college students excitedly meet with their dorm R.A. for the first time. As they go through their welcome packages, they’re confused. Rape whistles? Mace? Where is the fun in that? The sketch is smartly casual; the R.A. is matter-of-fact and ambivalent about the college’s institutionalized mistreatment of women and indifference to their safety and justice, but the things she is saying are pointed.

It was interesting to watch the episodes at a premiere screening in New York with a crowd. There was a palpable tenseness as this sketch aired. People didn’t seem to know when it was appropriate to laugh, or even if laughing was allowed at all. (The correct answer is: through the whole thing. It was really funny, and the comedy and its intended impact aren’t mutually exclusive.)

What’s remarkable about Inside Amy Schumer’s six-year hiatus is that I’m not sure it even could have existed in those six years. Would I have wanted to watch comedy about the things that were happening? Would I have been able to laugh? The fifth season of the show feels evolved, because we’ve all evolved. Well…evolved to a point. I’m still laughing about “Fart Park.”

Jennifer Coolidge’s “Holiday Pour” Is All I Think About Now

I haven’t seen The Watcher, but I am still confident in proclaiming Jennifer Coolidge’s character, a real estate agent named Karen, the best thing that’s been on television this year. 

The horror series is based on a New York magazine article about a couple who bought a house in New Jersey (that’s not the scary part) and begins to receive unsettling letters from someone who calls themselves “The Watcher” (the scary part). The couple never moved into the house and the article doesn’t solve the mystery of who sent the letters—a bummer!—but the series fictionalizes what would have happened if they did. 

It is, as friends of colleagues have told me, not entirely a mess, which is surprising given Ryan Murphy’s track record at Netflix. And Coolidge apparently steals the show, which, let’s be honest, is not a surprise at all. 

Given the clip of her in the show that’s gone viral—and changed my life completely—it’s easy to understand why.

In the scene, she is having lunch at a country club. The waitress pours her a glass of white wine. Before she walks away, Coolidge’s Karen calls her back. She’s going to need an extra “holiday pour,” she explains. A holiday pour! This is entertainment as a public service.

What is a “holiday pour” of wine? Let me explain what I learned after reading an article titled “What Is a ‘Holiday Pour’ of Wine?” 

According to the article, it is a glass of wine that is filled to the brim. It is the kind of serving you enjoy while on holiday, “when you don’t have to get up in the morning.” I would counter that it is the kind of serving you enjoy while living your damn life on a Tuesday or Wednesday in this rotten hellscape of a world we’re in. It’s 2022, babe. Every day needs a holiday pour. (But I understand the sentiment.)  

I am immensely grateful whenever Jennifer Coolidge is on my television screen. I am even more thankful when she is on my screen delivering a line about food and/or beverages that I will immediately incorporate into my own vocabulary. Do you “look like the Fourth of July?” Well, it “makes me want a hot dog real bad.” And I’m going to need a “holiday pour” of wine to wash it down.

Breaking News in the Special Salad Saga

If you have eight or nine hours in your day, please contact me so that I can discuss the story of Olivia Wilde, Jason Sudeikis, and the “special salad” with the depth and specificity that the topic deserves. 

In lieu of that, know that exes Wilde and Sudeikis apparently got in a fight once because she was making her “special salad”—with her famous dressing that Sudeikis felt an apparent intense, emotional connection to—for her new beau Harry Styles. The internet tracked down a recipe that Wilde made once on the Food Network, and then the actress-director sent the Great Special Salad Saga of 2022 into overdrive by posting a screenshot of Nora Ephron’s Heartburn that had a recipe for a vinaigrette that, we can all assume, she used. 

That was all an appetizer—the salad course, if you will—to my favorite twist in the drama. My colleague Fletcher Peters made a video and wrote a post about making the salad dressing herself (as Ephron says, everything is content!) and was immediately reached out to by the director of communications at Kraft Heinz on behalf of Grey Poupon Dijon Mustard. Yes, Grey Poupon’s got a publicist. 

“Grey Poupon Has Entered the Chat,” the subject read. (Phenomenal subject line. No notes.) Following its starring role in Wilde and Ephron’s recipe, the mustard is releasing a limited edition jar, with a name inspired by the title of Wilde’s new movie: “Don’t Worry Dijon.”

Just outstanding. I love it so much.

The Boss Is Back

It is very meaningful that, after a polarizing first season, the Sex and the City sequel series AndJust Like That… has chosen to fully embrace absolute chaos. Case in point: this new casting news that I 100 percent endorse.

It was announced this week that Tony Danza will play Che Diaz’s father in the sitcom about their life. In the Season 1 finale, in which Che revealed they are moving to Los Angeles to shoot the TV series, they said what seemed like a throwaway line of dialogue but then became a casting imperative: “Tony Danza is coming in to read for my father. He’s not Mexican or Irish, but he is Tony Danza.”

Damn straight he’s Tony Danza. It is high time for the Danzaissance. 

I’m Weirdly Thrilled This Kids Show Is Returning

My king gets to keep his purse! I am already exhausted by the inevitable discourse around the Teletubbies reboot, which hasn’t even premiered yet. (It debuts Nov. 14, which gives Tucker Carlson weeks to prep his tirade.) 

• The Banshees of Inisherin: If Colin Farrell doesn’t get his Oscar nod, we ride at dawn. (Now in theaters)

• Aftersun: King of tender, moody brooding, Paul Mescal, broods tenderly and moodily. (Now in theaters)

• Acapulco: This is a really fun series that flew under the radar in its first season. Rectify that for Season 2! (Now on Apple TV+)

• Black Adam: Bold decision to cast the Rock as a superhero and strip him of all charisma. (Now in theaters)

• My Policeman: Harry Styles, just because you’re handsome doesn’t mean you should be in movies. (Now in theaters)

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