--- description: A lot has changed since Schumer's sketch show became a touchstone of the pop-feminist era. So why is she reviving it at such a dark moment? title: 'Inside Amy Schumer' Just Wasn't Made for These Times image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt6090ed9d22ff4354/698a3682929fad69c3bf9208/IAS_519_042222_MW_0165_R2-bf533efbc98661be.jpg?branch=production&width=1920&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  * [Entertainment](/section/entertainment/) ## Entertainment Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close * [Television](/tag/television/) ## Television Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close # _Inside Amy Schumer_ Just Wasn't Made for These Times  by [Judy Berman](/author/judy-berman/)  ## Judy Berman Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close TV Critic Oct 19, 2022 1:01 PM CUT  Amy Schumer in Inside Amy Schumer season 5 Amy Schumer in Inside Amy Schumer season 5Matt Wilson—Paramount+  by [Judy Berman](/author/judy-berman/)  ## Judy Berman Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close TV Critic Oct 19, 2022 1:01 PM CUT [_Inside Amy Schumer_](https://time.com/3828976/review-inside-amy-schumer-season-3/ "undefined")is the product of a world startlingly different from the one we’re living in today. Spanning from 2013 through 2016, the show’s original, four-season Comedy Central run didn’t just make Schumer a household name. It also became a touchstone of a [pop-feminist decade](https://time.com/74861/pop-star-feminism-beyonce-miley-cyrus-pharrell/ "undefined") ushered in by the mid-aughts blogosphere and abruptly extinguished at the exact instant that Hillary Clinton conceded to Donald Trump, just a few months after the show’s finale. Suddenly, [Beyoncé performing](https://time.com/3181644/beyonce-reclaim-feminism-pop-star/ "undefined") in front of a giant _Feminist_ sign at the 2014 VMAs called to mind George W. Bush speaking in front of a giant _Mission Accomplished_ banner six weeks into the Iraq War. Ilana Glazer’s voracious [_Broad City_](https://time.com/4300659/broad-city-season-3-review-2/ "undefined") character lost her sex drive and ended up in therapy. As Schumer parlayed the success of [_Trainwreck_](https://time.com/3951177/trainwreck-slides-just-outside-amy-schumers-sweet-spot/ "undefined"), the 2015 rom-com that she starred in and scripted, into lead roles in big-screen comedies like [_I Feel Pretty_](https://time.com/5237435/amy-schumer-knows-she-will-make-more-mistakes/ "undefined")and _Snatched_, the show that had rightly earned her so much attention aged overnight. Hilariously attuned to the confusing mix of privilege, oppression, narcissism, and empowerment that comprised straight, white, middle-class, American womanhood at the time, her sketches highlighted the small hypocrisies and self-delusions of a group that could afford to laugh at itself but never forgot that men were worse. Six years after its finale, one need only review the results of the [most recent Supreme Court session](https://time.com/6193496/supreme-court-dooming-america/ "undefined") to understand how much has changed. Which raises the questions of why, exactly, _Inside Amy Schumer_ is returning for a fifth season (this time on Paramount+) and how its creator and star plans to meet a considerably dark, more delicate moment for feminism. The first two episodes, which will both hit the streaming service on Oct. 20, suggest that Schumer is equally confused about how to proceed. There are some genuinely funny sketches in the vintage-_Inside_ mold. The premiere opens with an amusing faux TV ad for a psoriasis drug that allows Schumer’s character to “get back to doing what I love”—making ugly, unusable ceramics for her family—followed by a confab of girlfriends whose apparent embrace of “gratitude” turns out to be an embrace of cosmetic surgery, featuring the original series’ frequent musical guest, [_Somebody Somewhere_](https://time.com/6142146/best-tv-shows-january-2022/ "undefined")’s Bridget Everett. In episode 2, Schumer plays an eliminated [_Bachelor_](https://time.com/collection/reality-tv-most-influential-seasons/6198489/the-bachelor/ "undefined")contestant recording audio pickups on her way out. As she re-records lines she’s well aware will paint her as a monster, the sketch becomes a shrewd commentary on reality stars’ complicity in their own humiliation. Maybe it’s not a coincidence that the funniest sketch of the bunch has no overt connection to feminism. “Fart Park” starts with the inherently funny concept of a dog-park-style enclosure in a public square for people who need a safe space to pass gas, escalates into a meet-cute (fart-cute?), and keeps taking wonderfully absurd turns from there. It’s over too soon—and if you’re a regular viewer of _SNL_’s interminable scenes, you know that’s a compliment. **Read More:** [**_The 11 Funniest Shows on TV Right Now_**](https://time.com/6221211/funniest-tv-shows-2022/ "undefined") Much weaker are _Inside_’s concerted efforts to engage with the daunting political issues facing women in 2022\. A lot of this material just feels tired, as though it were written years ago and dusted off for the show’s comeback. Schumer’s take on the [end of Roe](https://time.com/6222346/abortion-care-after-roe-doctors-lawyers/ "undefined")—a cheerful Colorado tourism ad that winkingly plays up the state’s “access” amid so many neighbors with abortion bans—would’ve been solid at half the runtime. But one dire sketch mocks a Texas tough guy’s worst fear: trans women using restrooms appropriate to their gender identity. Even a perfectly cast Ellie Kemper can’t save a parody of TV’s implicitly conservative Christmas specials that has been done many times before, culminating in the character’s horrified realization that the high-school sweetheart she’s reconnecting with has grown up to be an _all lives matter_ guy. At their worst, the jokes don’t land like jokes at all. A college-orientation sketch that might’ve felt fresh during the campus-rape debate of the early ’90s, finds an RA distributing gift bags filled with increasingly alarming items—rape whistles, mace, actual combat weapons—to freshman girls. It’s followed by one of many inexplicable new interstitial clips in which Schumer and her writing staff elaborate on the segment we’ve just seen. “College orientation is basically just: ‘Welcome to college, you’re about to be assaulted,’” notes _Inside_ writer and current university student Sascha Seinfeld. (Yes, [nepo-baby](https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/08/01/nepo-babies-nepotism-hollywood-celebrities/ "undefined") scholars, she is also Jerry Seinfeld’s daughter.) LOL? As hit-or-miss as the sketches can be, it’s these new interstitials that betray the show’s true aimlessness. The Comedy Central seasons sprinkled in footage of Schumer performing her standup act, conducting irreverent man-on-the-street interviews, and sitting down to chat with interesting, mostly non-famous guests ranging from a Catholic nun to a dominatrix. Aside from being genuinely fascinating and often quite funny, these nonfiction elements complemented sketches that weren’t afraid to get blunt about dating, body image, the unspoken rules of female friendship, and most of all, sex at its strangest and most awkward. (The series premiere opens with Schumer auditioning for the unspeakably disgusting viral porn video “2 Girls 1 Cup.” If you don’t already know what that is, I recommend never, ever googling it.) **Read More:** [**_The 32 Most Anticipated TV Shows of Fall 2022_**](https://time.com/6206647/fall-tv-shows-2022/ "undefined") Season 5’s behind-the-scenes clips, by contrast, tend to break a fundamental rule of comedy: they explain the jokes. Even more perplexing is Schumer’s choice to end both episodes with animated music videos for what her friend, _30 Rock_ and [_Silicon Valley_](https://time.com/45921/silicon-valley-review-hbo/ "undefined") writer Ron Weiner, describes as his “dorky comedy songs,” on such topics as why no one ever needs to buy napkins. (They’re easy to pilfer.) There’s nothing inherently wrong with the songs. They just have nothing to do with the rest of the show. Whereas _Inside_ once functioned as a compendium of Schumer’s keenly observed obsessions, it’s now more like a collection of things she kind of likes or feels compelled, as a feminist-identified woman with a mainstream platform, to address. Schumer is, clearly, in transition. Over the past four years, she’s gotten married, become a mother after enduring an especially difficult pregnancy, and, of course, survived the same pandemic nightmare from which we’re all still struggling to awaken. She’s documented all of the above in her stand-up and in the reality series _Expecting Amy_ and _Amy Schumer Learns to Cook_. This past spring, an uneven Hulu dramedy, [_Life & Beth_](https://time.com/6157958/life-beth-review-amy-schumer/ "undefined"), drew on [elements of her adolescence and adulthood](https://time.com/6158580/amy-schumer-interview-life-beth/ "undefined"). These projects are more obviously autobiographical than _Inside_ ever was, but Schumer’s sketches were nonetheless informed by her experiences as a young, single woman in the public eye who didn’t always meet society’s impossible beauty standards. Season 3’s episode-long _12 Angry Men_ parody, still my favorite thing Schumer has ever made, found a jury of male guest stars arguing over whether she was attractive enough to be on TV. It seems as though Schumer has put less of herself into the new _Inside_, whether because her daily life is less eventful now or because she feels more pressure, as an established celebrity, to make statements on Big Issues Facing Women or because she doesn’t want to repeat a schtick that got played out even before the pop-feminist juggernaut crashed. Fair enough. She’s also noticeably toned down the raunch; maybe her sense of humor has matured. Fine. But if Schumer wants _Inside_ to do for her in 2022 what it did for her in 2013, she’s got to find a new voice that’s as perceptive, provocative, and entertaining as the original. 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