by When Amy Schumer presents Rachel Feinstein tonight to Comedy Central, she really presents.
Schumer not only gives Feinstein advice backstage in a pre-taped green room bit, but also walks onstage first, introducing her to the New York City crowd last November (I was at the taping) by saying of Feinstein: “This comedian is not only my best friend, she is literally my all-time favorite comedian.”
High praise. Perhaps too much praise, in fact, by raising your expectations as a viewer. But also, exactly the kind of loyalty and support you’d hope for and expect from a true BFF.
Feinstein returns the favor while also proving Schumer’s loyalty with an example right off the bat, joking about how she mistakenly sent a naked photo of herself to a guy with the same first name as her boyfriend. And it wasn’t even a glamour shot. Schumer to the rescue! “And she said, ‘Well, if it makes you feel any better, I’ll send him one, too,’” Feinstein said. “It was one of the most beautiful things anyone’s done for me.”
On the flip side of the equation, she notes that you’re never expecting a dick pic. It just shows up on your phone. And women don’t need the reminders. “We already know that dick is there. It’s always just littered about. The street is littered with dicks. That’s what I’m going to call the special, by the way. The Street is Littered With Dicks.”
But she didn’t.
Here’s a clip of Feinstein’s opening bits onstage:
Feinstein is working on a half-hour pilot for Comedy Central (also executive produced by Schumer and Schumer’s sister) in which she goes undercover to conduct social experiments.
In her stand-up, Feinstein is amazed by the level of detail strangers or social media “friends” divulge to the world online. So much that, rather than sending out naked photos of herself, Feinstein is much more likely to send screen shots of other people’s dumb Facebook statuses. “I think that some people think that Facebook is like some sort of a God that you tell your darkest secrets to every hour,” she jokes. Or the people who update us on the private medical issues of their relatives. Who does that? More people than you would fear, it turns out. She recorded her first hour special before Facebook expanded our reaction options to more than merely like, comment and share — she’d still like even more options, though. “You should be able to choose I now think you’re unstable, or like, I was considering sleeping with you, but after your genocide post, you won’t be getting a whisper of puss from me,” she jokes.
Whisper of Puss, also not the title of this hour. Oh, but if it were, the places we would go.
Feinstein is more than willing to share the depths of her previous dating disasters, noting the irony of staying in a horrible relationship for the sake of watching a great TV series together (as if breaking up during Breaking Bad is as harmful as breaking up when you have a child) or dating a “wild alcoholic” for four years, while calling off a relationship as a deal breaker as soon as she saw that a guy had a belly button ring. Guys can be douches or tools, and Feinstein finds herself more accepting of the latter. Why? “A tool is a kindly moron,” she explains. “I just wanted someone I could prop up and take to a wedding if I had to.” Just so she doesn’t have to show up alone. Or be by herself.
But she has an amazing ear for voices and her stand-up comes alive as soon as she breaks into the voice of her mother, or her grandmother, singing Yiddish showtunes and portraying a woman who may have jumped off the screen of a 1940s movie. You can picture Feinstein’s overwhelming mother, who has no sense of how others perceive her, somehow being clueless about comedy yet still having enough self-awareness to ask her daughter, “Can you please take that one out of your talent show?”
Despite perhaps putting too much credence into the advice she received in puberty from a boy in school (who tried to make her feel better about her nickname of “lazy tit” by assuring her that her ass more than made up the difference) or her Nanny (who gave her the titular advice, “Only whores wear purple”), Feinstein is onto something. When she tells her audience, “stay with me guys, I know this is getting weird,” you should stay.
Even when it gets weirder, like the time Jenna Jameson visited Buffalo the same weekend Feinstein played the comedy club there and wanted to hang out. “She looks at me and goes, ‘You and me: life on the road.’ I think she thinks we do the same thing.”
Nope. Feinstein’s not wearing purple.
Her nanny taught her right.
Rachel Feinstein’s first one-hour stand-up special “Amy Schumer Presents Rachel Feinstein: Only Whores Wear Purple” premieres with limited commercial interruption tonight at 11 p.m. ET/PT on Comedy Central.
It’ll be available on April 24 on cc.com and in the Comedy Central App, with an extended and uncensored version available for download on CC: Stand-Up Direct, iTunes, Amazon Video, Microsoft Movies & TV, Vudu, Verizon Multi-Screen, Google Play and Sony Entertainment Network on April 26. The digital album will also be released by Comedy Central Records on that date to iTunes, Amazon MP3, Google Play, and all streaming and satellite services such as Spotify and SiriusXM.
