Minor Threat
"This is what I use for birth control ... my personality," chronic next-medium-thing Laura Kightlinger used to joke in her stand-up act. But fertile hard-ons weren't the only thing her regal nihilism kept at bay; semi-stardom hasn't come either.
Hollywood, after all, has rules. If you're drop-dead gorgeous, and wickedly funny, and too cerebral for the room, you'd better be kind of flirty and servile too, or at least a little maternal, because the menfolk have to have some way to get purchase, don't they?
The dusky-voiced Kightlinger isn't loud or belligerent or challenging in any of the usual obvious ways, but ultimately she's about as flirty and servile as a statue of Joan of Arc, and as maternal as a belt sander. So even though she's been a cast-member on Saturday Night Live, a correspondent on The Daily Show, a writer on Will & Grace and Roseanne, and the author of an engagingly bleak and caustic memoir, she's probably best known for being Jack Black's (ex) girlfriend. Talk about putting a gal in her place!
Maybe her excellent IFC series, The Minor Accomplishments of Jackie Woodman, which she writes and executive-produces as well as stars in, will change that. Now in its second season, Jackie Woodman is the Fountains of Wayne of sitcoms -- its influences are readily apparent, it doesn't do anything groundbreaking, but it's executed with such smart assurance it deserves to go platinum at least a few times over.
As Jackie Woodman, Kightlinger plays a downmarket version of herself -- she's an aspiring screenwriter punching the clock as a staffer at a celebrity weekly that's more matte than glossy. Tara, her spazzy blonde best friend-forever (played by actress Nicholle Tom), works as a D-Girl at a C-list production company. Like Laverne and Shirley plopped in the middle of The Day of the Locust, they booze, schmooze, and flooze their way through the outter circles of Hollywood as the gas tanks of their souls slowly tick down to E.
Actually, Jackie doesn't drive, but that's not the only reason she isn't getting anywhere in her life. She's also lazy, caustic, headstrong and cursed by the universe, it seems, to always remain at least three zip codes away from success. When she's drunk, she makes bad decisions. When she's sober, she makes even worse ones.
Still, inexorable failure has never looked so inviting. Jackie and Tara may be losers, but they're losers who have the consolation of each other, and their foxhole camaraderie somehow seems a lot more genuine than, say, the back-slapping bromance on display at Entourage, where bad luck never intrudes long enough to determine whether or not the friendships really are more than mansion-deep.
Along with its world-weary warmth, Jackie Woodman also wants to make you squirm. But there's a scuzzy, off-kilter realism in play here that distinguishes it from shows like Curb Your Enthusiasm and The Sarah Silverman Program. In one episode last season, a hot young director who Jackie wants to interview makes a pass at her. She acquiesces fairly easily, and just as things are heating up, he punches her in the face … hard. It's as casual and abrupt and violent as a Sopranos smackdow. And planted in the middle of a sitcom, it does that rarest of things in today's world of willfully edgy and provocative TV: It actually shocks you.
A frequent contributor to Las Vegas Weekly, Greg Beato has also written for SPIN, Blender, Reason, Time.com, and many other publications. Email Greg at [email protected]