Amy Schumer was too “depressed” about the 2016 election to make her sketch show
Amy Schumer didn't have "anything to say" for Inside Amy Schumer during Donald Trump's presidency
Aux News Amy Schumer
Remember how people used to insist that President Donald Trump would be “good” for comedy? Now that we’re finally out of the Trump era (are we out of the Trump era?), that conventional wisdom seems debatable at best. Sure, Alec Baldwin may have won an Emmy for playing him on Saturday Night Live, but is that really a net positive for society? If anything, television comedy (of the late night and sketch variety, at least) seemed to stagnate over the Trump presidency. And over at Comedy Central, Inside Amy Schumer ceased to function at all.
And not for lack of trying: the sketch show was renewed, and the network left the door wide open for Amy Schumer to return. “We told her, ‘Any time you want to come back, we’re here,’” former network president Kent Alterman previously told The Hollywood Reporter. Unfortunately, the election left the comedian “totally depressed and without anything helpful to say,” she explained to the outlet.
Reiterating as much during an appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, Schumer says, “The last season was 2016. And that’s not a coincidence. I was incredibly depressed since then. I just really didn’t feel like I had anything to say, and I was really too bummed about the election—I don’t know if you guys read about it? It was just all of it.”
There’s still a lot to be desired, politically speaking (“It’s not good,” Schumer proclaims of the state of the world), but “I felt ready to do it again, and we had the best time” bringing the show back, she tells Kimmel. And the writer’s room, she teases, was not afraid to talk about “all the ish going on,” which she finds “sickening.” (Schumer specifically shouts out protests in Iran on the Kimmel stage.)
Also, don’t expect another big gap between seasons; though Paramount+ reportedly reached out to her about making five stand-alone specials of the beloved show, Schumer is “hopeful they’ll allow her to do more,” per THR. There will surely be plenty more “ish” for the show to skewer for seasons to come.
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So there was a bright side to the 2016 election, then.
zing!
Didn’t she announce the end of the show well before the election? And wasn’t it because her head writer decided to be a rape apologist and she decided to end the show rather than fire him? This was JUST before MeToo iirc.
She also had joke stealing allegations catching up with her in 2015. She got Menciaed.
He wasn’t the head writer. The guy you’re thing of (Kurt Metzger) sucks, but let’s not take credit away from actual head writer Jessi Klein, who emphatically does not suck.
Kurt Metzger is not a rape apologist. The point he was making then was that if non-criminal organizations, like comedy clubs, adjudicate rape and sexual assault allegations, then a lot of people will believe that cancel culture has meted out justice to a rapist, but that leaves the rapist free to rape again because he has not been removed from society to pay for his crime.
I don’t really recall people saying Trump would be good for comedy, though I can easily imagine some people thinking it. After all, Bush was “good for comedy” in that he was an idiot goofball who couldn’t put words together good or nothing. Even in retrospect, it’s hard to tell whether his domestic failures were more horrible than his international atrocities or vice versa, but somehow The Daily Show and its progeny were often able to find humor in it. Of course, both Bush and his satirists ended up driving up cynicism to record levels so that later, when an even bigger idiot goofball who couldn’t put words together good or nothing appeared, somehow lacking the grace to seem moderately embarrassed by it like Bush did, far fewer people had the patience for it.
Anyway, Schumer probably had the right idea here. There was virtually no good comedy about Trump, probably just a few spare lines from actual comics. Off the top of my head, I can only think of Mulaney’s Horse in a Hospital bit. And even that isn’t really as funny as Will Ferrell as W saying “Strategery” before we all learned how bad his administration would turn out to be.
Patton Oswlat on a Netflix special said making fun of Trump was a pain in the ass. to paraphrase the bit, if you saw a monkey flinging shit and then spent all the time about coming up with a great shit flinging joke but by the time you come up with it the monkey has taken the shit and made itself a hat out of it.
Honestly, the funniest thing about Trump was the one thing that none of the various TV jesters seemed interested in touching; specifically, the way that the majority of people in any positions of authority and power bent over backwards for him and lined up to defend him saying black is white, up is down, etc. Or at the very least could only muster half-hearted criticisms of him due to not wanting to incur the wrath of his base. That is to say, it would have been funny if any of the late-night jokesters felt like tackling the issue. Of course, that would have forced them to confront the fact that most of their corporate employers were included in this faction. It was especially sad to see Stephen Colbert go from calling out Bush to his face to inept, toothless Leno-like jokes of the “LOL Trump is gay for Putin” ilk.
Weird you call that joke toothless considering how many people got offended.
honestly the way people fell under his cult spell so easily was the most disheartening aspect of the last 6 years to me. I mean, they couldn’t jump into bed fast enough with that piece of shit, AND were peacock proud of it, and just to own the libs a bit more, vacillated between mocking *you* for not doing it AND *feeling sorry* for not doing it. It was like watching a beloved grandparent develop dementia and then start smearing their shit on themselves, throwing it at you and laughing about it, etc.
I saw claims that Trump would be great for comedy and all art in general. That’s one of those claims that’s so big it’s practically unverifiable/unfalsifiable, but my gut feeling has generally been “nah”
I definitely remember that stuff, particularly comedy and music being cited.Bizarrely, a few people who ostensibly were on the left but thought it would be great because at least he wasn’t Hillary Clinton or an establishment Republican. Good call fuckwits.
Trump kind of gestured toward populism a couple of times during the campaign (massive infrastructure investments, free big beautiful healthcare plans for everyone) but once in office it quickly became clear that he (surprise, surprise) only gave a shit about personally enriching himself, and his brain-dead followers only gave a shit about lib triggering and abusing migrants.
Say what you will about Nazi Germany, but their comedy scene was booming!
I feel like even before t***p was president and he’d go on Letterman to let Dave mock him, even Dave had a hard time pulling that off (despite the fact that he was a willing participant; even then he was like a child so pathetically desperate for attention that he’d settle for negative attention over no attention). Despite being someone who is begging to be made fun of, trying to do so seems to be like punching a pillow over and over; eventually you get tired of it.
It was this weird situation where it was painfully obvious to everyone that Trump is a thin-skinned narcissist who is terrified of being made the fool, but because he’s a thin-skinned narcissist he (and by extension his administration and followers) is impelled to tell everyone at every opportunity how little he cares and he’s not embarrassed at all and he’s doing great. So it ended up being just round after round after round after round after round of “the emperor has no clothes!” followed by “THE EMPEROR HAS MANY CLOTHES AND THEY’RE VERY SHINY AND BEAUTIFUL AND EXPENSIVE! LOOK AT HIS BEAUTIFUL CLOTHES! LOOK AT THEM!”
After all, Bush was “good for comedy” in that he was an idiot goofball who couldn’t put words together good or nothing. I mean, that describes both Trump and Biden as well so there’s that.
Well she was probably really busy with moving to Spain
Wasn’t it Canada with the rest of the celebs that never actually moved?
Good news.
What does it say about a subject that it completely defies comic treatment? Why was it so hard to make anything about Trump funny? The grotesque can conflict with comedy, that’s true. It’s an interesting question.
It’s hard to make fun of someone who is a walking faux pas utterly devoid of scruples or decency. It’s not punching up or punching down, it’s like punching into the 5th dimension.
It’s hard to make fun of a guy whose default behaviour is more ridiculous than an Onion headline. Like, where do you go from there?
Still remember Jon Stewart leaping with joy over the prospect of Trump running. It’s a measure of how isolated and out of touch he was getting, even then, and it’s no surprise that he eventually devolved into a “China virus” guy.
You say that like there was a widespread belief that Trump would be successful.
he “leapt with joy” over the prospect of t***p running? Why? I don’t remember that at all, in fact I’m still puzzled why “famed political satirist” Jon Stewart fled the Daily Show just as Dipshit came into office and left us with Trevor Noah.
Oh he definitely salivated over it, maybe just as a “bit” but it was delivered in a way that conveyed “oh he’ll never win, but I love how he’s just taking the whole party down with him.” To be fair, there was a lot of lib gloating about that back in the day. Poor instincts.What wasn’t such a poor instinct was to hand the reins over to someone who wasn’t another white dude, and he did it before Trump won (which…again…)
“oh he’ll never win, but I love how he’s just taking the whole party down with him.” LOL that thinking seems so 2015 now doesn’t it? I mean, maybe a fight between him and DeShithead will take down the GQP but more and more they seem like the proverbial cockroach that would survive a nuclear blast, powered by hate and entitlement.
I think Trump could have taken them down if they had any soul, any scruples at all. Instead, once it was clear he was trouncing all their candidates onstage and had all the heat in the primary season, they threw in completely with him, prepared to bathe the country in as much bloodshed as necessary if it meant furthering their agenda.
their agenda is “power at all costs”, which is why they align so well with fascism in the first place. It’s such a simple concept I wish more Democrats could take it to heart going forward because every fucking election from now on, not just the midterms in 6 weeks, will be a vote for or against democracy or fascism. The GQP is NOT going to have some Bridge on the River Kwai type epiphany that the way they’re going is anti-democracy, so if that’s what you want with all its warts and failings, you’d better nut up.
https://www.cnn.com/videos/entertainment/2015/06/17/jon-stewart-donald-trump-campaign-announcement-orig.cnnBasically it was the “oh boy, this is gonna be so great for comedy” energy that a lot of other comedians had. Narrator: it wasn’t.
Narrator: it wasn’t. I assume this was Ron Howard? LOL
At the time the idea that he could win seemed impossible. Everyone though he was going to be another Herman Cain quoting the Pokemon movie.
I sincerely hope between this and the Dobbs ruling the average “oh this will NEVER happen in sane America!” liberal has finally been sufficiently awakened to just how low the modern American conservative will sink to get and wield power especially over vulnerable minorities.
The truth is that the only way Trump could have won was running against Hillary Clinton. Literally any other candidate not named Clinton would have beaten him in 2016. The Democrats abjectly failed to realize that the only thing that would spur establishment Republicans and moderates to vote for an obvious crook and sociopath like Trump would be their well-nurtured hatred of the Clintons, and specifically Hillary.And it’s going to happen again in 2024, because the GQP has successfully transferred the demonization energy from Hillary to the Bidens, thanks to Hunter and Joe’s age. If the Dems field Biden again, whichever ambulatory piece of Taco Bell diarrhea makes it out of the GQP primaries – Trump or DeSantis – will win the general. You can count on it, even if Liz Cheney decides to run as an independent, because the machinery of the GQP has gotten so efficient since 2016 that not even actual, verifiable treason is enough to bring real consequences to bear against them.
If any other Democrat would’ve beat Trump, why didn’t they beat Hillary?
Because the party establishment panicked, and they threw all their weight behind Hillary because they thought she was the most electable of all their options.
I think if the party establishment was that powerful Trump wouldn’t have won the nomination, since he didn’t exactly have the GOP’s back during the primaries.
IMO, both parties catered to their worst instincts in 2016. The Dems freaked out that their other candidates were too far from the center to be viable and went with what they thought was the safe option, while the GOP got drunk on the concept of populist power after seeing Trump’s rallies. Many disasters are a result of a confluence of a lot of improbable events coming together at the same time, like the sinking of the Titanic. 2016 was like that too.
What makes you think the Dems had that much influence on their voters in 2016?
Not everyone. Some of us realized how dangerous he was right away.
t***pLOL serisouly?
Jon announced he was leaving months before Trump announced his candidacy.
She was never a good political comedian, so why not have a show that made fun of everything else ridiculous in the world? She managed to do her show while Obama was in office, and I’m pretty sure it didn’t center around mocking him. This was the worst impact that the Trump presidency had on comedy – everyone felt THEY were the one who needed to be delivering the definitive takedown, night after night, and it got boring as all fuck in very short order. The late night shows still haven’t recovered because they’re still putting him front and center 20 months after he left office.
“She managed to do her show while Obama was in office”
Yeah, and also she wasn’t suffering from depression.
Jesus, read much?
Alec Baldwin won an Emmy for playing Donald Trump? ridiculous. that performance was cringe and fucking terrible.Love Inside with…, i remember how good season 3’s run was.
English, please?
She wouldn’t have had anything good to say anyway – one of the major reasons Trump won was that the vast, vast swathe of the country that is deeply white supremacist, deeply misogynistic, and deeply fucking stupid decided they wouldn’t be condescended to anymore. They figured out the final trick after sweeping up the ashes of the Bush years: Never be ashamed, never apologize, be proud of who you are at all times no matter what. It’s where all their power comes from, and it worked gangbusters. It rendered every late night show useless, enabled their elected footsoldiers to flout the law with zero consequences, and cleared the path for their tiki torch marches and Capitol building attacks.The ONLY hitch in their whole plan was that Trump himself so cravenly desires love from the media, so he still gave a shit about SNL. He’d get real heated about Alec Baldwin’s awful impression of him, and try to pretend that the ratings were sinking or no one cared, but it was so clear how much he cared. If only he could snarkily laugh it off, or take direction from the Murdoch braintrust about how to respond, but no.
if she can do anything as great as that Friday Night Lights parody or “Last Fuckable Day” then it’ll be great to have her back. After 6 years out of the game and a kid I’d be surprised if she can attain those heights again.
My MSNBC-addicted parents keep expecting me to derive entertainment from the Trump scandal du jour. Like, they keep sharing “Trump using ESP to declassify documents” memes with a picture of the Great Gazoo or some boomer shit, whereas my response has long since switched over to “yep, he sure is shambling sack of cum who should just fuck off and die already.” I can’t get through to them that not having to think or talk about Donald fucking Trump 24/7 is a precious gift we all earned back in 2020. Is he dead or in jail? No? I don’t care. I do not care.
My parents have been yelling at the TV all my life but oh my god when Trump was in office it was unbearable…it’s calmed down a bit now but yeah they would chew the cud over the newest Trump BS with me for hours if I let them.
You’re lucky. My parents were glued to fox news 24/7. Thankfully, they shut it off after the election and haven’t watched it since.
You’re lucky (this is starting to sound like The Four Yorkshiremen). My parents call Trump “appalling” but believe he’s exponentially better than any other non-Republican option, and also that everyone – everyone – loved Trump’s actual policymaking.
Occasionally my wife will share something particularly idiotic someone in his cult has said or done and I just can’t find the humor anymore. I have learned that just because something is ridiculous doesn’t mean it can’t be incredibly dangerous.
Please count your blessings at having MSNBC parents. You could have Fox News parents, or even OAN parents.
Definitely, but I still think cable news of any ideological stripe rots people’s brains. “Infotainment” has had a disastrous effect on journalism.
“Also, don’t expect another big gap between seasons; though Paramount+ reportedly reached out to her about making five stand-alone specials of the beloved show, Schumer is “hopeful they’ll allow her to do more,” per THR.”
Wait, so I shouldn’t expect a long gap because HBO Max only contracted her to do five specials but she *might* do more?
Fascism is bad for everything and everyone.
All of the Trump comedy was too meanspirited to be funny. It was like, “we get it, you don’t like him”. The Daily Show suffered because all they could do is pick on Trump, which got boring, and Trevor Noah is terribly unfunny. Jon Stewart knew how to keep it light even when you knew he had nothing but contempt for some of the people he was talking about.