someone please let Vanessa Bayer cook

one of our most underutilized comedic resources deserves to thrive

I was watching the Christmas episode of Elsbeth last week and Vanessa Bayer showed up right at the beginning and a little voice inside my head let out an almost involuntary “Hell yeah, Vanessa Bayer.” This is not the first time this has happened. It happens pretty much any time Vanessa Bayer shows up on my television, like when she pops up in What We Do in the Shadows or in a sketch on I Think You Should Leave or… anywhere else, basically. There’s a very simple reason it happens, too. Because Vanessa Bayer is awesome.

She’s been awesome for a while, too, dating back through her run on SNL where she played about three or four memorable characters who stole entire segments of Weekend Update. She was awesome in her short-lived Showtime series I Love That For You, too, which was loosely based on her own history with childhood leukemia and co-starred Molly Shannon, another SNL alum with a long history of making me say “Hell yeah” whenever she appears in a show or movie. She was perhaps most awesome in this delightful little bit from the Trainwreck press tour, which I have watched on YouTube maybe 400 times in the nine years since it happened.

So that’s the good news, the thing where Vanessa Bayer appeared in a guest role in a holiday themed episode of a charming CBS murder mystery procedural and it reminded me how awesome she is. But it also brings us to the bad news, which is that Vanessa Bayer does not appear in enough things that remind me how awesome she is. I do not fault her for this. I do not fault myself either. Vanessa Bayer and I are doing the best we can. The problem is these damn Hollywood fat cats.

I mean, I assume it is. Or whoever else is to blame for not having Vanessa Bayer as a main character in a fun little comedy on literally any streaming service. Or as the comedic relief in a popular series of movies. Or as the host of a travel show. Do you see how easy this is? Do you see how many options we have? Lesser talents are thriving all over all of our screens every week and meanwhile I have to wait for the Christmas episode of a Good Wife spinoff to be reminded that Vanessa Bayer shreds every time you point a camera at her?

No. No, this will not do. I need someone to fix this. I do not care who it is. I just need someone with the power to do this to step in and correct this wrong and let Vanessa Bayer cook. Vanessa Bayer and I have done our parts already, her through years of appearing in scene-stealing roles and me through typing this blog right now. Now it’s on you, fat cats.

Fix it.

STUFF I TYPED

— Vulture let me write about how awesome Ted McGinley is as Derek on Shrinking

— my Friday newsletter, which opens with a segment about Black Doves, a really fun and twisty spy series that co-stars the voice of Paddington as a messy assassin

— I am in the new print edition of Sports Illustrated with a blog — is it still a blog if it’s in print? — about the Paralympics, which you can find in your supermarket, probably

STUFF I CLICKED ON

— Scott Tobias wrote a beautiful essay about working at a multiplex

— the Steelers play my beloved Philadelphia Eagles this week and I want them to lose by one million points but there’s no denying that their coach, Mike Tomlin, is one of the coolest dudes alive

— I do not watch Yellowstone but I am enjoying the experience of seeing it drive Kathryn VanArendonk insane

— the Franklin Institute has been accused of stealing an airplane from the estate of a daredevil playboy

— Harley Quinn back

— Miller High Life dive bar cologne

— I love the world’s oldest newlyweds

— great blog about an Eagles tailgate doing good things in the community

— traffic mess caused by 30k pounds of melted chocolate

— Charles Barkley is cool

— lol

— also lol

— “Tempers spill over as elderly residents revolt against booze ban”

— Zoomers are causing a Guinness shortage

— loved this Barry Petchesky piece about turning his cat into a turkey fiend

— help I can’t stop looking at the wildlife photography

— the Brussels sprouts are getting bigger and sexier

— Warner Bros will no longer produce Sesame Street, which is not helping the public perception of its CEO David Zaslav as a cartoon villain

— Maya Erskine is the best

— Shrinking has a character named Brian and it leads to characters saying stuff like this a lot, which is weird for me when I’m trying to watch

Okay, that’s it for this week. Please share and subscribe and let Vanessa Bayer cook.