Like the flavor of cilantro, or garlic with a history of using racial slurs in its standup act, Sarah Silverman is a difficult taste to acclimate to if you’re not there already. Some people may have been born loving her, some learn to, and some people never will.
If you belong to the first category, then get this: We’ve assembled a list of some of Silverman’s best performances across a career that’s spanned 30 years, even if it seems like that can’t possibly be right. We even left out RENT and Space Jam: A New Legacy, because that’s how much we love you. Enjoy.
The Sarah Silverman Program
The Sarah Silverman Program was ahead of its time in so many ways. It ruined child beauty pageants before It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, took down a bunch of culturally untenable episodes before The Office and 30 Rock, and fired Dan Harmon before Community.
It also presented a Chuck Jones-ian, unblinking force for chaotic stupidity in the form of its main character, Sarah, a cannonball of immaturity for whom things always turn out okay. The better part of two decades after its debut, it remains shocking and hilarious and wildly, indescribably stupid.
Oh, if you count the fact that it got canceled after three seasons, it was also ahead of the curve re: making Jay Johnston unemployed.
I Love You, America
It didn’t last long, but I Love You, America had a noble premise: become Mister Rogers, but for adults in a post-2016 election world. Inspire a sense of community between neighbors being fed a diet of disdain by the media, social and otherwise. It didn’t always work, and by the time the episode with Sarah’s eyewear provider rolled around, she was clearly as tired as most of us would be for the next six years, but it was a nice idea.
Jesus is Magic
If you don’t like Sarah Silverman, you won’t like Jesus is Magic, the 2005 concert film that The Guardian called “comedy gold,” The New York Times disapprovingly referred to as a 72-minute Aristocrats joke, and Roger Ebert described as filling him “with an urgent desire to see Sarah Silverman in a different movie.” The deeply uncomfortable material and cherubic delivery make for deeply upsetting viewing for anyone not already sold on Silverman’s whole deal. If you’re fond enough of her to buy the ticket, it’s worth the ride.
That segment from Jimmy Kimmel Live! where she told her boyfriend what she was doing to Matt Damon
There’s a chance that you’re too young to this, but in 2008, Sarah Silverman went on her then-boyfriend Jimmy Kimmel’s show to further the just-blossoming feud between the late night host and Bourne Etc. star Matt Damon. This was accomplished via a music video for an original number, the name of which we can’t even repeat here. What began as a soulful, melodic guitar riff swiftly transformed into a wide-eyed celebration of two people’s bodies – specifically, Damon and Silverman’s.
The result was crass, horrifying, catchy, and Emmy-winning, and it will still to this day get you fired if you watch it at work. Also worth mentioning: It inspired the less funny but infinitely more expensive follow up on the subject of what Kimmel was doing with Ben Affleck.
That weird period in the ‘90s when nobody was sure what to do with her
Lots of performers go through an awkward, pre-fame phase where they haven’t been “discovered” yet and their agents don’t quite seem to know what to do with them. Silverman’s was a doozy, and it gave us an entire genre of television: “Shows where Sarah Silverman shows up, terribly miscast, and you think for a second that you’re having a stroke before you realize that she was just a working actor in the ‘90s.”
Examples include: An episode of Star Trek: Voyager where she plays the scientist from the past who falls in love with Tom Paris, an episode of JAG where she plays a public affairs officer who falls in love with Rabb, an episode of Seinfeld where she plays a woman with restless leg syndrome who falls in love with Kramer, and an entire season of Saturday Night Live where she presumably didn’t fall in love with anything, considering how she’s talked about the experience in the years since.
Published: Oct 20, 2023 01:39 pm