It’s been a minute since Amy Schumer was all over … well, everything, but her Comedy Central series Inside Amy Schumer came back for a fourth season on Thursday, April 21. The premiere is the perfect encapsulation of what makes the series so good — and one sketch stood out in particular as the kind of pointed commentary we’ve come to expect and crave from Schumer’s show.
Inside Amy Schumer skewers clueless congressmen who try to legislate women’s bodies
Caroline Framke wrote about culture, which usually means television. Also seen @ The A.V. Club, The Atlantic, Complex, Flavorwire, NPR, the fridge to get more seltzer.
In “Dr. Congress”, Schumer goes to get a routine pap smear, only to be met by a team of clueless old guys in suits from a congressional “women’s health” committee. The sketch depicts the members of the committee as so mind-bogglingly obtuse on basic anatomy that they can barely utter the word “sex” without dissolving into scandalized tsk’ing.
Here are just some of the hilarious — in a horrifying way — questions they ask her:
- “When was the date of your last lady curse?”
- “How many blood diapers did you use?”
- “It says here that you’re 34. How many children do you have?” (To which Schumer perplexes them all by responding, “None.”)
By the time they’re done asking questions and ready for the pap smear, Schumer realizes there are tons of men there, but no women. “Aren’t there any women on the women’s health committee?”
The men laugh, amused at the very thought, before one sums it all up in one awful, condescending sentiment: “Why, that’d be like letting the lions run the zoo!”
“Dr. Congress” hits the exact combination of pointed, political, ruthless, and feminist that has made Inside Amy Schumer appointment viewing. Watching these men lecture a woman on their bodies is infuriatingly familiar, but in talking about it, at least it becomes a little cathartic.
