Respect Authority

We are all witnesses. We are all laughing, smiling, idiotic witnesses of the death of one of America’s most beloved funny women (women here is plural, and just barely). I’m talking, of course, about Ana Gasteyer. Actually, no, I’m talking about the painful ongoing death of Tina Fey, and no one realizes what’s happening.

Just a little more than a month ago, Tina Fey was the at the toppermost of the poppermost. Years after becoming the first ever female head writer of SNL, then a star of the show thanks to Weekend Update, followed by a successful turn in writing the only watchable thing Lindsay Lohan has ever done, Fey created 30 Rock, the funniest network sitcom over the last year and a multiple Emmy winner. Things were going great for Tina Fey.

Everyone loved her (and not just those among us anymore who are turned on by the ever important glasses/facial scar combo) and she was in the very rare breed of being a female comedian who is actually, legitimately funny (though she still trails Amy Sedaris in that department). Even starring in a not so great movie, and a not so annoying commercial, was good for her because it pushed her closer to becoming a major mainstream star, and deservedly so. Not all transitions go so smoothly (I’m looking at you, Wanda Sykes).

So then what happened you ask?  Why is she dying?  The answer is a two-parter with the first part being very clear and simple: Sarah Palin.

Seven or eight weeks ago when “America’s Most Popular Governor,” — who, ironically, no one in “The Real America” had ever heard of at that point — was ripped from America’s womb (after John McCain raped us with his selection and then wouldn’t buy us the rape kit we couldn’t afford anyway because we’re all broke now), everyone’s first reaction other than, “JAAH???” was, “gosh, she sure does look like funny lady, Tina Fey.” I equate this moment to Tina Fey being figuratively shot in the stomach. Shocking? Yes. Dead yet? Not quite. Could she recover? Not bloody likely.

Almost instantly, everyone was demanding Tina Fey to TAKE A GIANT STEP BACKWARDS in her career by appearing on the painfully unfunny and totally irrelevant show that she graduated from years ago. It isn’t earth-shattering news that SNL has taken a serious turn for the worse since Fey left and Seth “Staring at the Camera for 5 Seconds After Every Joke I Tell Automatically Makes Said Joke Hilarious and Me Adorable” Meyers took over as head writer and ran an American Comedy Institution into the ground. So now, just because a stranger to American politics and the real world in general was all of a sudden a VP candidate, Fey had to stop what she was doing to become a poor man’s Darrell Hammond?

Don’t get me wrong, it takes a special kind of human (and in Frank Caliendo’s case, “Special” is capitalized) to become a comedic impersonator. The good ones like Hammond are skilled at hiding the natural overwhelming blandness by looking at sounding like people who are a thousand times more famous and likable. Impressions can be hard to do, and it’s an art form for those who are good at it, but for someone with actual original talent like Tina Fey, it just doesn’t work. The sad thing is that no one seems to realize this.

 

Has Fey gotten laughs as Sarah Palin? Absolutely, but if you think about it, it’s not that hard. Just the idea of Sarah Palin and who she is is laughable on its own (that is, of course, not counting all the times she makes you want to stab your ears off). Forget about the “executive experience,” she doesn’t even have “functional human experience.” In Fey’s first three appearances as Palin, there were hardly any jokes written for her. Most of the “comedy” there was just verbatim quotes of things Palin said herself, which Fey even admitted when she was on Letterman (around the 1:50 mark). Every now and then you’d see a joke about a “lifeline” or a flute solo, but other than that all we were doing was laughing at things on television that we already laughed at all the week before on YouTube. It’s pretty scary.

The only reason we liked Fey’s Palin was because of Fey’s charm and likability, and because of that we’ve created a monster. The bullet in Fey’s stomach was now going through her like she was in Three Kings.

The sad thing here though is the second part of the answer: Tina Fey had no choice.

 

It was hard to see at first, but I noticed something towards the end of Fey’s acceptance speech after winning the Emmy for Best Comedy, where she pleaded with America to actually watch 30 Rock on their televisions (again, oddly at the 1:50 mark). Watching Fey, who is in the last generation of old school TV writers, being so clearly upset about something she works so hard on, and does so well, was an uncomfortable feeling even though it’s hard to argue with how favorable today’s landscape of television is for the viewer.

The unavoidable truth however, is that the major networks are still basing a show’s success mainly on it’s initial night-of ratings. Fey knows this, and while she undoubtedly appreciates the love that she gets from her fans and critics, she knows that she still needs to get viewers to watch her show so she can keep doing what she loves and keep her friends employed.

How was she going to fix this problem? Well, since for some odd reason (and it may be Kath & Kim related), NBC decided sometime ago not to air the 30 Rock season 3 premiere until October 30th. Fey had to generate some buzz to win new viewers and keep her show on the air. Fortunately for her, shortly before the Emmys, a spinal surgeon fell out of the sky onto her little island. That surgeon? Sarah Palin.

All Fey had to do now was agree to help out Lorne’s embarrassing television staple that is starting to parallel Shawn Kemp’s career (with all of the bad movies representing Kemp’s illegitimate children).  How do I know this is the truth? Just the other day I saw a promo for the upcoming 30 Rock premiere in two weeks that said, “you’ve seen her as Sarah Palin on SNL, now watch her on her show, 30 Rock!”  Ding, ding, ding! Fey even said during the Emmys that she didn’t want to have to play Sarah Palin and she wouldn’t be playing her anymore past November 5th. Still though she’s letting NBC use her and claim that it was their great idea to have her play Palin, even though Lorne Michaels said that, “the whole world cast her in that role.”

It’s really depressing to see that Fey’s career and popularity is taking off because of this turn of events. Instead of being known as a smart and funny actor/writer/comedian, she is now legitimately being marketed by her own network as the Sarah Palin impersonator. Hey, whatever it takes as long as Lorne gets record ratings for SNL, right? All Tina Fey had to do was pretend to be the man-jawed, dead-behind-the-eyes, secessionist lover from a state where grizzlies (of the non-lesbian variety, obviously) and foxes can legally vote. All for a woman who will be remembered ten years from now in the same way we now remember Semisonic’s, “Closing Time” from ten years ago:

“Wow, that song was annoying wasn’t it? Why was it so popular? What were we thinking?  Oh well, at least we don’t have to listen to it anymore.”

What makes it even sadder is if you watch Fey’s interview with Letterman you see her slowly start to realize that she will forever be connected to this woman she couldn’t possibly like, not even a little bit.

So, what can be done? How can we fix this? Is it already too late?

Well hopefully, Palin will fade back into obscurity (you’re welcome for no lame Bridge to Nowhere reference) in a couple of weeks, and 30 Rock will be just as funny or funnier than it was before (though, seriously, it’s pretty ridiculous that they feel like they need to have a huge-time guest star every week). Hopefully, a pre-Crystal Skulled Indiana Jones can come out of nowhere and let Liz Lemon drink from the Holy Grail to save her from her mortal stomach wound, much like he did with his father. In fact, if Harrison Ford needs to guest star on 30 Rock to do this than so be it. That way we’ll be able to save two birds with one stone.

That is, of course, until the next Indy movie premieres in 2011 — Indiana Jones and the Invisible Malaysian Galactic Tomb of the Pewter Labradoodle, starring Moxie CrimeFighter Jillette.

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So what’s worse, me writing 1,500 words on this, or you reading 1,500 words on this? Surely someone made it this far?