S1E4: I attended an informal boys club meeting
Myspace, SNL's golden era, and shattering the good ole glass ceiling
I am honestly not even sure where to start with episode four, because it is a truly phenomenal episode of TV. We see Leslie pushing hard against her local “boys club” (no shocker, Mark’s involved) and, no shocker, chaos follows. In her attempt to fit in, she opens a contraband gift basket given to them by citizens to get some wine when the boys club runs dry, which isn’t allowed because public officials can’t accept gifts.
This wouldn’t be that big of a deal, except of course Leslie turns herself in by emailing every member of City Hall. Which ALSO wouldn’t be a big deal, except at the beginning of the episode, we learn that April’s helping Leslie set up a Myspace page to raise awareness for the pit, and at the same time Leslie takes a bottle of wine out to the boys club (plus Ann), April’s guzzling another bottle in the office and uploading a video to the pit’s Myspace page. Which, okay, this one might seem like a bigger deal with today’s evolved understanding of digital privacy (it was DRILLED into my head in middle and high school to not put anything on social media I wouldn’t want college acceptance officers to see…and I’m honestly not sure I followed this advice now that I write it…), but this? This is 2008. Social media is an actual baby. It barely has legs. Leslie literally doesn’t even have a term for social media yet — she calls it “one of those social network internet profiles.” So Leslie has to go before a government disciplinary council and plead her case, which she fears will end in firing but really just ends with a slap on the wrist and a very shaken Leslie.
If you listen to the actors talk about Parks and Rec, many of them will say the show didn’t really hit its stride until season two, but I think we can start to see the whispers of a stride in this episode. It’s a very tight, incredibly well-written 22 minutes and I had a blast rewatching it.
Episode 4’s focus on Leslie infiltrating the boys club — which really here is just a group of the city planners drinking beers in the City Hall courtyard — instantly reminded me of one of my favorite topics that I wrote extensively about in my aforementioned lengthy thesis: the Tina / Amy era of SNL.
It’s actually more the Tina / Amy / Maya Rudolph / Kristen Wiig / Paula Pell / Rachel Dratch era of SNL, but the golden age is synonymous with Amy and Tina for 3 reasons:
They’re best friends, so when you think of one, you think of the other
Tina was head writer at the time and actually the first ever female head writer
Tina and Amy were the first two women to Weekend Update together
Amy and Tina were not the first female SNL trailblazers (I get one pass per season to use such a girlboss-era term and I’m cashing in now). Gilda Radner, Jane Curtin, Candace Bergen (not a cast member, but the first female 5-timer), Molly Shannon, Ellen Cleghorne, and Julia Louis-Dreyfus got there first, but the era of Amy and Tina was something special. It by no means fixed all of SNL’s deep rooted, drug ridden, straight white male-centric culture, but Tina’s head writer stint helped usher in a new era for the women. In Bossypants, Tina says:
“Nobody would have thought for a second that a dude in drag would be funnier than Amy, Maya, or Kristen. The women in the case took over the show in that decade, and I had the pleasure of being there to witness it.”
Tina tells this great story in her book about how, in one of Amy’s first few weeks at SNL, she was doing a vulgar bit in the writing room when Jimmy Fallon, in his absolute heyday at the time, turned around and joking complained “Stop that! It’s not cute! I don’t like it.” Tina says that Amy went “black in the eyes for a second, and wheeled around on him. ‘I don’t fucking care if you like it.’” In the Tina / Amy days, the women made it clear they weren’t playing by the men’s rules.
Seriously thank god they didn’t! :ook how many amazing sketches it gave us: Mom Jeans! Kotex Classic! Target Lady! Debbie Downer! (Please stay tuned for a whole post about Debbie Downer one day.)
But of course we can’t all be happy we get some good comedy out of this. Ooooof course some guy had to open his mouth in response to the women infiltrating the boys club. In this case, the guy was columnist Christopher Hitchens and the metaphorical mouth opening was a truly, truly abhorrent article published in a 2007 version of Vanity Fair titled “Why Women Aren’t Funny.”
I’ll spare you the reading of the article (trust me on this one) but Hitchens, who’s now dead and thankfully no longer available to grace us with his delightful comments on the subject, basically argues: men have it real real hard and their soul purpose in life is to find a female mate, so telling jokes is a way to make women like them :) Women are delicate little flowers but also simultaneously “cunning minxes” who don’t need to be funny because it would make us too powerful over men and also go against the rules of our innate biology. I mean, this guy literally writes “Mother Nature (as we laughingly call her) is not so kind to men.”
Rereading that article made me feel like I was sitting in a big ball of slime. I’m still unsuccessfully trying to scrape it from my brain. If I were to list all of the problems with the article, I would have to literally go word by word, but you get the gist. BUT this is where it gets more fun: a Vanity Fair turf war!
In response to Hitchens, journalist Alessandra Stanley (who, to be fair, has a relatively fraught reputation herself for some of her writing) published a 2008 response piece called “Who Says Women Aren’t Funny?” The header is a photo of Kristen Wiig, Maya Rudolph, and Tina Fey in the back of a car, seemingly ready for a night out, and in the header, Stanley writes “the idea that women aren’t funny — and which male said that? — seems pretty laughable these days.”
This article also has its flaws, even though it doesn’t make me feel like I need to immediately pursue a cleansing ritual — it comments extensively on the looks of many women and assumes that stand-up comedy may have historically been harder for women because it’s too “aggressive” — but the overall point it makes is that the Tina / Amy era of SNL helped to open up mainstream comedy to more women. Which is very much true. Stanley writes:
“Suddenly, S.N.L. sketches were written by women, for women; the biggest stars were Poehler and Maya Rudolph….when Rachel Dratch, another strong cast member, introduced her whining Debbie Downer character, in 2004, Michaels says, ‘It was almost old-school.’ As comedy has opened up, women who once might not have dared write comedy, or writers who hadn’t considered performing, have been emboldened to become writers and get onstage.”
SNL began to hire more and more funny women like Kate McKinnon and Vanessa Bayer (they even formed the all-female musical group, YRGRLS, as a response to Andy Samberg’s iconic The Lonely Island). More sitcoms than ever are only about funny women: there’s Broad City, Insecure, The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. And don’t even get me started on Bridesmaids.
Back in Pawnee, Ann and Leslie have a moment at the end when Ann asks Leslie why she opened the gift basket to take to the boys club, a truly out-of-character act for rule-stickler Leslie. Leslie says, “I think it’s because I wanted to shatter the glass ceiling and really infiltrate the boys club.” And, okay, I know I promised only one girlboss sentiment per season, but this quote seriously made me a little bit emotional. Not because Leslie necessarily does this in Pawnee — although I guess she kinda does by moving on up the government ladder as the show goes on — but because Amy helped to do this at SNL. And comedy is way, WAY better off for it.
But as Tina says in her book, the funny women “don’t fucking care if you like it.”
Now that I’m off my soapbox, time for more of this damn-near perfect episode’s best moments:
The entire trifecta of Leslie’s “press conferences” aka the moments she’s speaking directly to the camera to confess her prior sins is such an amazing technical piece of sitcom writing!! In the first one, Leslie is calm and collected, but apologies by name to every single female Congresswoman, IN ALPHABETICAL ORDER (“Tammy Baldwin, Republican, Minnesota”).
In the second one, Leslie is more distressed, but gives updates on the situation at hand (“good afternoon. since we last spoke…”).
And in the last one, she’s a total mess! She’s sobbing! She can’t even speak! It’s a truly genius use of parallelism and really, really awesome writing
The dog poop fights in the cold open. Perfect.
The scene of Andy playing Mario Kart on the Wii in Ann’s house is both seriously centering this in 2008 for me and also making me realize how eternal Wiis are. I’m looking at one in my living room right this minute that I bought off of a family of 4 during COVID so I could play solo guitar hero. When my roommates and I used to get bored, we’d play competitive Just Dance. My friend today was telling me about how he organized a Mario Kart tournament at his college reunion over the weekend. (Technically, it was Beerio Kart. No drinking and driving!) Mario Kart on Wii will never die.
Leslie on turning herself in: “I asked Ron to blow the whistle on me and he refused. So this is why I had to whistleblow myself.”
Ron trying to comfort Leslie as she panics by very nervously extending one hand and patting her on the shoulder
When Tom runs a mock trial with Leslie and asks her how many drinks she has per week and she says “0-6” and he says “I’m gonna say 10” and she looks at the camera and goes “…yeah”
I TOTALLY forgot about Andy taking a bath in a kiddie pool in his front yard
And then he chases his arch rival Lawrence (“hey park lady, you suck!”) down the street fully naked on his crutches
Ann after Leslie admits she has a crush on Mark: “Smart woman. Iiifffy choice in men. But then again I’m not one to talk.”
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Such a great episode!!