All right, so, we didn't get to see Tracey Ullman's State of the Union premiere last night. (We don't have Showtime just now, thank you very much.) But we really really wanted to, because Tracey Ullman has been on our mind for a few weeks now, ever since that Vanity Fair article about funny women came out. You know, the article that didn't mention her. Did that strike anyone else as a little weird? Granted, Ullman's had kind of a lo-pro of late, and -- perhaps more problematically -- she's an example of that sort of "one woman show" period in 80's and 90's comedy that most people in the world -- certainly the women profiled in that VF piece -- seem eager to forget.
But dammit, did no one but us fall back in love with Tracey the minute she let Johnny Knoxville yodel in her canyon in A Dirty Shame? Who else could have managed that role, which required both sweetness and gleefully smutty abandon in equal, precisely measured amounts? And who else, 20 years into a career in television comedy, seems more determined than ever to use their formidable skills as a mimic and performer to piss people off? By which we mean: why the holy hell has it taken this long for anyone to come up with such a technically convincing, thoroughly scathing Renee Zellweger impression? Or for someone to point out that Arianna Huffington, grand poobah of the blogorati, might not actually have the firmest grasp of what the word "blog" means?*
Sketch shows are always uneven prospects, and we daresay that the actual "State of the Union" might be a little angrier than a newly minted US citizen like Ullman might have first imagined. But from what we can tell, she sure is off to a swell start getting at some deep, dark truths. And for that -- heck, solely for her deliciously bloodthirsty reading of the headline "In South Africa, Angelina Jolie was beaten by an angry mob of her own children" -- Tracey Ullman is our Crush of the Week.
(Oh, but please tell us that the Little Britain guys are getting, like, some sort of payoff for this show, since, well, duh.)
*Oh wait, the Times noticed this too.