Comedy
Michael Scott’s departure from “The Office” two years ago felt like the series’ natural endpoint. It was sweet and sentimental, gently poking fun at one of show’s basic conceits: that an unseen film crew had spent nearly a decade chronicling daily life at a Scranton paper-supply company, and the resulting documentary is what we are watching. READ MORE >>
Liz Meriwether is trying to figure out the best way to make READ MORE >>
Conan O'Brien’s WHCD Jokes Were A Missed Opportunity
The comedian couldn't help making himself, not the media, the butt of his jokes
When Conan O’Brien took the stage Saturday night at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, he looked a bit like a giant, flame-haired mannequin, smiling tensely and reciting his jokes with one eye trained on his notes. READ MORE >>
Rebel Wilson Wants You to Squirm
The rising Aussie comedienne is the anti–Melissa McCarthy
Rebel Wilson’s career is clearly on the rise. The 27-year-old Australian comic actress was introduced to American audiences as the roommate of Kristin Wiig’s character in Bridesmaids. She starred alongside Kirsten Dunst, Isla Fischer, and Lizzy Caplan in Bachelorette (2012), playing against type as the sensible ingenue in an ensemble of female basket cases. In 2012 she also appeared as “Fat Amy” in the a capella comedy Pitch Perfect. And last night she hosted the MTV Movie Awards, her first starring role. READ MORE >>
Late-Night Comedy, All Day Long
How Fallon, Kimmel, and other shows are adapting to the viral age
As soon as Michelle Obama agreed to appear on “Late Night With Jimmy Fallon,” the writers began brainstorming madly. The president’s slow-jam of the news in April had been a huge success—one of the show’s very first YouTube videos to go viral—and the creative team knew they had another potential hit on their hands with Michelle. READ MORE >>
When Dan Harmon took the stage at Meltdown Comics in Los Angeles on June 16, several weeks after he’d been fired as showrunner of NBC’s “Community,” the mood in the room was tense. Harmon had been performing his live show, “Harmontown”—part stand-up, part confessional, part drunken pop-cultural exegesis—for about a year. But that night in June was his first performance post-“Community,” and from the moment he began talking, it was clear that the purpose of “Harmontown” was new. READ MORE >>
When “30 Rock” airs its final episode Thursday night, it will end its seven-year run as one of the decade’s most celebrated sitcoms, with a pile of Emmys to its name. “TGS with Tracy Jordan,” the live sketch comedy show that Liz Lemon (Tina Fey) struggles to pull together every week, can’t say the same. For the past seven years, Fey has created a brilliant comedy about the making of an abysmal one; the terrible quality of “TGS”—and the likelihood of its being imminently cancelled—is often the butt of jokes. READ MORE >>
