Last night NBC aired SNL In The 2000s — a nostalgic retrospective and appreciation of the last decade, which feels like it was just yesterday. Um, because it was! But the aughts did bring us a lot of funny women.
One segment of the special focused on the 00s as a time where the show’s strong leading ladies — Amy Poehler, Maya Rudolph, Rachel Dratch, and, yes, Tina Fey — really broke SNL’s legendary male-heavy mold. Says Will Forte, “The boys’ club is dead. It’s a co-ed club. Everyone’s a member.” I’m not sure that’s totally true, but there was arguably a shift somewhere in the show’s backstage politics, such that strong female talent was cast — far exceeding the token quota — and those stars were allowed to shine. And yeah, it certainly helped that the last two years gave us Hillary and Sarah to keep more female comedians in front of the camera.
SNL cast and crew refer to this time as “the era of women,” and while that seems like a bit of a back-patting overstatement, the female-centric greatest hits reel conveys moments of lady-genius. Colonel Angus, anyone?
Of course, letting ladies run the ship led to some discoveries for the men around set — Alec Baldwin, for one, learned that “some incredibly vulgar notions” come out of women’s mouths. Welcome to the locker room, buddy.