![]() ![]() Broad City and Baroness von Sketch Show share some delightfully salacious elements. Baroness reminds me, too, of The Carol Burnett Show in its unfettered silliness (and the collegiality of the comics involved), or Second City in the good old days, or Comedy Central’s Key and Peele in the way both crews become so enchantingly immersed in character. That the bodies, hearts, and lives of women are so circumscribed by external forces leaves a great deal of room to explore the complexity of our interior experience. This genre of comedy owes a debt to the winking insider feminism of Amy Schumer’s absurdist comedic approach, although it’s subtler, more deeply Canadian in its neurosis, and to my mind, way funnier. This show manages to be wildly funny while enacting a form of social protest. The show, which was launched to little fanfare, but instantly and widely shared on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, may be the first truly viral show to come out of Canada’s official public broadcaster . . . well, ever. ![]() This is the disruptive “real” I’ve been missing in my real, everyday life. Laughing such a belly laugh I can’t believe my good fortune. ![]() At first, because the sketches walk an almost torturous line between satire and life, I don’t laugh so much as mutter, “My God.” But then I watch the skits again until the joy burbles and I am laughing from the very node of my being. One sight gag has Browne staring at MacNeill’s very pregnant belly, and asking if she can touch it (by the way, don’t do this-it’s weird), only to instead plunge into MacNeill’s bosom to cop a languorous feel. They have it mapped out like diligent and transgressive draughtswomen who, instead of yielding to the airtight edges of their inherited designs, work to erase them. ![]() And oh, how the Baronesses know the contours of the boxes in which we live. That is, it celebrates and spoofs the mundane realities in which modern, urban women find themselves depicted. Its funniest moment is when Taylor asks the group, as a focusing exercise: “How will the women know it’s for women?” effectively making transparent the dominant creed behind our razors, hand soap, even ballpoint pens, of women’s apparent and utter helplessness to make informed, individual decisions.Ĭonceived and performed by Taylor, Aurora Browne (another Second City alum), Meredith MacNeill (of the BBC comedy Man Stroke Woman), and Jennifer Whalen ( This Hour Has 22 Minutes), Baroness von Sketch Show revels in the everyday lives of women. She is instantly slammed by the incredulous veteran: “Of course it’s pink, you idiot!” The skit is Femininity 101 as imbibed through mass consumer culture. The group throws out the usual suggestions: use butterflies, make the bottle slim (“Because women are slim!”) A new employee suggests they make it pink. In one episode, “Women’s Products,” a hard talking exec (played by the Second City veteran comedian Carolyn Taylor), is leading a group of creatives on the marketing of a new product for women.
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