Who’s funnier? Tina Fey or Sarah Silverman

Tina Fey is far funnier than Sarah Silverman. While I applaud both women, Ms. Fey’s comedy is more polished, snarkier, and smarter. I like Sarah Silverman and was disappointed when Comedy Central stopped playing her show. I think if they’d given it some more time, I might think differently about Ms. Silverman’s abilities.

Don’t get me wrong, I think she’s funny. Trust me, I’m all about crude. If you’re a lover of Cervantes, Rabelais, Boccaccio, etc., you gotta be crude to appreciate those dudes. And that’s just a short, short list of the classics that abound with ribaldry – I’ll spare you the list of contemporaries (and for me, an index of “contemporaries” begin in the nineteenth century).

To be sure, I like that both these comediennes are crude. Again, I think it’s clear that I appreciate and relish vulgar forms of humor, but Ms. Silverman’s whole shtick is simply too unrefined, and that bothers me. Again, I’m not blaming her for being “less” funny than Ms. Fey, as I blame the fact that her show wasn’t allowed to blossom. I hope she’ll find another niche, say HBO, and she’ll have a similar show, and her weirdness and crudity will be put to the test, and for more than just a few seasons.

Unfortunately, television has a knack for cutting shows too soon. It’s similar to the music industry. It’s nothin’ but crappy, one hit songs, belted out by a thirteen year old girl/guy that matters these days, and that’s a shame, because the whole industry is run by a bunch of old men who don’t appeal to a wider range of Americans and are only lookin’ to make a buck, so that they can roll around in their RRs, smoke Cubans, and live in their over-sized Malibu manses.

But getting back to Ms. Fey. I’ll just say, I’m in awe. 30 Rock is absurdly funny, and we must thank Ms. Fey for that. I mean, Liz Lemon talks about poop and stuff, but the subtexts are far wittier than anything I saw on Ms. Silverman’s show. Ms. Silverman was too caught up in making fun of herself by obsessing about herself. As a viewer, it filled me with TV-viewing ennui, and I lost interest. It’s like, OK, OK, OK. I get it, Ms. Silverman, you’re self-obsessed, you’re narcissistic, you’re SO disgusting that you make fun of AIDS, blah-de-blah. And, like I said, I laughed at a lot of your stuff, but there’s a point, as my old friend use to say, when “you take it too far.”

That’s exactly what Ms. Fey’s character in 30 Rock and the stuff she wrote for Saturday Night Live doesn’t and didn’t do, i.e. flail about on the same old tired theme. See, witty, biting stuff has to show restraint. It’s not easy to rein in your humor, particularly when you’re talented humorists like Ms. Fey and Ms. Silverman. But it’s critical, absolutely critical, if you wanna captivate your audience for more than a few hours, or say two seasons.

Granted I chuckled at the “I’m F*king Matt Damon.” video. It was pretty good, but I guess I get sick of her lack of subtlety. Of course, humorists aren’t supposed to show restraint and subtlety. If they did t

hat all the time, they (obviously) wouldn’t be funny. Where would all those quirky, unrefined punch lines go if they were all about subtlety and restraint? But Ms. Silverman insists on pushing the envelope in everything she creates, and that gets old. If you do that, if you never show restraint, if you’re always, always over-the-top, then people will just yawn after all your acts. Why? Because they already expect you to push the skit, the idea, whatever to the limits. In a word, it’s called overkill.

And Ms. Fey’s style of humor is anything but.