The women saved SNL, and nobody told me?

I never thought Saturday Night Live would recover from the nadir it hit in the 90s, because as opposed to previous rough spots, the flaws were more structural than cyclical. But now in my opinion it's truly funny again. And the thing I find remarkable is that it's almost entirely because the women. I don't think I could say about any previous cast that I tuned in just to see the female cast, but with the exception of Darrell Hammond, nobody comes close to Amy Poehler, Maya Rudolph, and Kristen Wiig. SNL had a long-standing reputation for being a tough place for women, but it feels to me like the over the years I've watched it off and on that there was evidence of opening up a female-driven perspective... but maybe there are just a lot more humorous references to menstruation. That shift may have resulted from Tina Fey's tenure running the writers' room, but hopefully it continues despite her leaving to do 30 Rock.

In my opinion Amy Poehler is the new star of the show, the way John Belushi, Dana Carvey, and Will Ferrell were in previous eras, because she owns every sketch she's in. When she came onto Weekend Update replacing Jimmy Fallon-*, that may have been the beginning of the return to its previous glory. I would even say the most outstanding thing about Seth Meyers is his rapport with Amy Poehler in their sketches together and on Weekend Update, and the two of them are hilarious together. The recurring characters “The Couple Who Should be Divorced” would have gotten old a long time ago if it wasn't for the flare with which Amy and Seth just tear into each other, first with the insults and then the public make-up sex. And that isn't the only sketch I've greeted with a bit of a grimace only to be won over by Amy Poehler's antics. And I won't ever see Avril Lavigne anywhere, in any context, without picturing Amy Poehler in a tie yelling “I wear black tampons because I'm a punk!”

Maya Rudolph has had for a long time a whole stable of impressions and characters that form the basis of a lot of sketches, but the person I'm really impressed with at present is Kristen Wiig. She's only been on a short while but the richness of some of the impressions she's done makes her possibly the equivalent to the role Phil Hartman and Darrell Hammond have played on the show: the Man of a Thousand Faces, because she smoothly slides into every sketch. For the 50% of my readership that are grand connoisseurs of the work of Drew Barrymore, her impression captures Mlle Barrymore's speaking style so perfectly that after a single line I found myself thinking “Wow, I never realized Drew Barrymore talks like that.” I also think she's about the most attractive women to ever appear on SNL, but I'm sure that has nothing to do with my affection for her.

*-Getting so into your own performance that you laugh at all your own jokes worked better for Dennis Miller. Probably because Dennis Miller also immersed himself in eating shit when a joke flopped, and he didn't do Jimmy Fallon's thing of turning to the audience to laugh at his own sketches like his own version of The Gary Shandling Show, a Pirandellian sitcom which was apparently seen by nobody but me.