This year has been a shit show of unimaginable proportions, and we’re not sure how we would have made it without the help of funny women on TV. In celebration of the end of the longest 365 days ever, here are ten bright spots from 2016. Many of the choices hail from the comedy world — escapism and satire have never been so essential — but there were also a few major standouts in the drama arena too. Though much work still remains to be done in terms of equal representation and pay, the small screen was overall a much, much richer place this year for creative women than film.
1. “Full Frontal with Samantha Bee”
We were all disappointed Bee didn’t get the “Daily Show” hosting gig when Jon Stewart left, but didn’t realize just how colossally she deserved it until her show debuted this year and quickly pointed out so many things that other news-satire shows weren’t saying — especially when it came to women. (Yes, even you, John Oliver.) Bee’s reporting is funny, of course, but it’s also often undercut by a completely serious outrage about events that, way too often, most media outlets just let pass by without a mention. She’s been the loudest voice of Trump criticism in this arena, and now that we’re in for at least four years of his decomposing-pumpkin face, it’s comforting to know that she’s already renewed for at least one more season. Let’s hope it’s just the first of many more to come.
2. “Lady Dynamite”
Maria Bamford’s Netflix show is a somewhat-autobiographical look at the intersection of show business and mental health, inspired by the comedian’s own struggles with bipolar disorder and making a living in the entertainment industry. It’s also just a hell of a lot of fun (as you might expect from a show executive produced by Pam Brady of “South Park” and Mitchell Hurwitz of “Arrested Development”). One of my favorite bits: Bamford’s long honed an alternate, smooth-voiced L.A. persona in her comedy, and she dips into it here and there on the show — as in this absurdist clip, which opened the pilot and set the tone of the series pretty definitively.
3. “Fleabag”
Phoebe Waller-Bridge originated the titular character in this deliciously dark Amazon comedy as a one-woman show (which she is currently reprising onstage in London). It starts out as a seemingly straight-ahead delve into bad behavior with a narrator who regularly breaks the fourth wall with profane abandon, but as “Fleabag” unpacks the story of why, exactly, Fleabag is such a mess, the show blooms into a wonderfully complex, feminist tragicomedy. I don’t know whether she could ever follow it up with a second season, but I’d love to see her try.
4. “Angie Tribeca”
Rashida Jones picks up where Leslie Nielsen left off in this underrated TBS spoof series. Women are so often cast as the straight gal in slapstick (see: Monty Python, Pink Panther, Mel Brooks, many of Nielsen’s Zucker brothers projects) that it’s liberating to see Jones front and center as a hard-boiled detective mired in a world of bad puns, prop jokes and pratfalls. Props to Nancy Carell, who co-created this show with her husband Steve and makes an appearance in the show’s first episode as a socialite who messily downs a rack of ribs during an interrogation.
5. Kate McKinnon as Hillary Clinton on “Saturday Night Live”
McKinnon is the only entry here who’s not new to 2016, but we think she ascended to some serious trailblazing comedic heights this year on the show as she played Clinton with heart and humor. It was a role many of us assumed she’d be trotting out regularly for the next four years, at least, but after the election, she broke all our hearts with a fairly final-seeming performance of “Hallelujah” (though she has since popped up in a recent sketch about people who snap shots of Hillary in the woods).
6. “Insecure”
Issa Rae’s HBO comedy, borne out of her “The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl” web series, takes on the subject of being a young black woman in L.A. with such a refreshing, intelligent voice you have to wonder where she’s been all your life (and why you weren’t paying attention to her web series back in the day, damn it). Her freestyle about a “broken pussy” — when she discovers she’s got a knack for it, at the expense of her best friend — is one of the single cringiest (in a good way) scenes I’ve seen all year.
7. “Better Things”
Pamela Adlon’s semi-autobiographical sitcom about raising daughters as a working actress is acidly funny. A longtime writing partner of Louis C.K., she brings a similar blunt-talking tone to her comedy, but she also comes across as much more human than he often does. At the same time, Adlon’s not afraid to show her character making morally dubious choices — one episode in which she bails on a birthday weekend trip with her lonely mother is particularly painful to watch and really makes you like the character less, which I think is a pretty bold move. Mostly, though, she’s just wry and spot-on with her running critiques of everything around her. Here she is making fun of “Game of Thrones” like a boss.
8. Sarah Paulson in “The People vs. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story”
Paulson took a vaguely familiar name (and hairdo) from now-dusty tabloid headlines and gave life to the story many had forgotten: A dogged female prosecutor who tried her hardest to send Simpson, a well-documented domestic abuser, to prison and was thwarted by a perfect storm of racial unrest and the advent of both the 24-hour news cycle and celebrity media.
9. “Stranger Things”
Two heartbreaking female performances anchored this Netflix mega-hit: Winona Ryder in full early-‘80s-Stephen-King mode as the harried mom of a boy gone missing, and Millie Bobby Brown as Eleven, the odd telekinetic girl with the shaved head who often evoked E.T. in her mannerisms but ultimately also embodied the struggle of being any adolescent girl.
10. “Queen Sugar”
This three-sibling drama set in Louisiana started out with soap-opera pacing but deepened into having a truly affecting emotional arc. What’s more, creator Ava DuVernay did something unprecedented and game-changing: She hired exclusively female directors for the show’s first season. The show hit record numbers for its debut on the OWN network, with 2.14 million viewers, and will be back for a well-deserved second season.
