New Girl premieres tonight. We bemoan the injustices of the TV world.
By Maura Hehir
As of September 20th, Zooey Deschanel will be carrying her own show on FOX called New Girl. The pilot is already available on iTunes, but you only have to watch the preview to question Deschanel's comedic abilities. It's less of a "sitcom" and more of a "sit." So we've compiled a list of five female comedians who might not have the name recognition of Zooey Deschanel but would nonetheless be far more welcome on our TVs.
1. Jena Friedman
Besides being a writer over at The Late Show with David Letterman, Friedman is the mastermind behind the brilliant “Ted and Gracie”— a parody of the hilariously awkward New York Times “Vows” videos. Her stand-up is dark and acerbic, which, with the contrast of her sweet, unassuming look, would make her perfect on a show where she could play a naive, Gracie-like character suffering various grotesque indignities.
2. Natasha Leggero
Leggero would be great on a dialogue-heavy, plot-light comedy — her voices are spot-on and she really shines at imitating dumb people; also, she looks kind of like an Italian Amy Winehouse. She’s playing Emma on the NBC workplace sitcom Free Agents this season, but we still think she deserves to be the lead in a show and have face-on-billboards-everywhere hype.
3. Chelsea Peretti
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Chelsea Peretti is a writer for Parks and Recreation, which means she's responsible for churning out some of the funniest lines on TV right now, and I can’t help but automatically like her. She has kind of a weird Jersey drawl, even though she’s not from Jersey, and likes to talk about how mean she is to everyone (she makes fun of her friends, and she once recorded the weird things a guy said to her during sex and played them for an audience) in a way that reminds us a less self-satisfied Sarah Silverman. Does TV need that? Maybe not. But we'd watch anyway.
4. Jen Kirkman
You have probably, at some point, seen the “Drunk History” videos (and if you haven’t, you should). That’s Jen Kirkman. Her stand-up reminds me a little bit of Louis C.K.’s, in that her humor is often self-deprecating, but more feminine (obviously) and a bit more earnest. I can definitely imagine her as the star of a show like Cougar Town, playing some stuck-in-a-rut suburban character, frankly — and hilariously — complaining about the banalities of everyday life.
5. Morgan Murphy
Morgan Murphy evokes the classic dry, jaded, awkward female voice of Daria. That's why she should get her own show; just like Daria, it would be everyone's favorite now, and then in a decade, they'd all decide that it was actually annoying and overrated. Plus, Murphy's whole persona makes her sound like a teenager, so she should probably play one — it's really hard to imagine her playing an adult.
