‘Bridesmaids’ Is Great, But ‘The Minor Accomplishments of Jackie Woodman’ Is Better

In Crabby’s Fantasy World, Laura Kightlinger is as big a name in comedy as Judd Apatow. In the actual world, she’s one of the most perpetually underused and underrated talents in the business. She is fucking hilarious, and you need to Netflix her right now.

You may have at least heard of The Minor Accomplishments of Jackie Woodman, her short-lived IFC show about which I am constantly evangelizing. In a setup she’s said is based 85% on her life, Kightlinger plays Jackie, a magazine writer and aspiring screenwriter trying to keep it together in L.A. with the help of her dimwitted BFF Tara. The closest approximation is it’s Absolutely Fabulous minus twenty years and transplanted to America. But maybe a little bit darker. You get a sense of how things are going to go down in the first season’s opening credits, which feature Jackie and Tara shaking up a cocktail of vodka, beer, weed, coke, lube, birth control pills and prescription drugs. Then Tara passes out. And, scene.

I was planning to say this show is the anti-Sex and the City, but that’s not exactly right. I actually like SATC, for what it is – but it just never goes quite far enough, you know? Any cutting observation that’s made is usually tempered, at the episode’s end, by common sense and friendship and bonhomie. Not so in Jackie Woodman, where Jackie’s life often starts out shitty and ends up shittier, interspersed with a few moments of petty personal vengeance or fleeting awkward romance. (At the start of an inspired love montage, she meets her soul mate when they bump into each other and both their flasks fall onto the ground. In the morning, I might add. They then go on to realize her lifelong dream of shooting a stop-motion short film with live bugs.) Jackie’s curmudgeonly asides, moderately-medicated depression, and existential ennui aren’t simply a setup for some sunnier character to debunk. They’re the heart of the show, which makes it a show dear to MY heart.

I recently listened to the episode of Marc Maron’s “WTF” podcast in which he interviews Kightlinger and echoes my sentiments of WHY THE HELL AREN’T WE SEEING MORE OF YOU. “I’m a genius! I never work!” she agrees. Granted, this may be due to her own unapologetic sloth, a recurring theme on Jackie Woodman and one of the many reasons Crabby has a total girl crush on her.

So why doesn’t the rest of the world get it? Perhaps it’s all in the name. “‘Laura Kightlinger’ doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue,” my boyfriend pointed out. “Not like Tina Fey.” Somewhat frustratingly, she’s been linked with some of the most famous men in the biz: she dated Jack Black, and Jon Stewart back when he was still Jon Leibowitz; accordingly, you’ll catch her in fleeting appearances on “Tenacious D” and early eps of The Daily Show. She’s a good friend of Louis CK, who has put her in every project he’s done up until his current FX show – about which she openly bitches on “WTF.” And then she and Maron get on the phone and call Louis, and it’s weird and uncomfortable and kind of great. But why is it that she’s never ascended to the kind of widespread recognition these guys have gotten? Where’s her fame, goddamnit? In a quote attributed to her that I can’t find the source of – but truly hope it’s for real – she says, “I want to be so famous that drag queens will dress like me in parades when I’m dead.”

Still, she’s not completely off the radar. As a matter of fact, she’s got a new series on Atom.com, satirizing Intervention-esque reality TV prohrams. Check out American Heroin(e) here, and see if that isn’t dark enough for ya. Best misuse of Sophie’s Choice ever? I think so.