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COPYRIGHT 2003 All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of The Condé Nast Publications Inc.
A couple of weeks ago, NBC ran a Museum of Television & Radio special called "Great Women of Television Comedy."It was a fairly patronizing concept in the first place--"Here's a little something for the ladies”--and the show didn't, and couldn't, give many of the featured women their due (Imogene Coca, for instance, got almost no airtime); the clips usually weren't long enough and bits were either cut off in midstream or reduced to their payoff pratfalls or tag lines. Moments of illumination were rare: sitcom stars, past and present, stated the obvious about the humor in supposedly universal female rites of passage, such as dating and marriage and motherhood (the show seemed to have channelled the mind-set of the comic strip "Cathy”), but, with the exception of Jenna Elfman, who had some insight into the hilarious chocolate-making scene in "I Love Lucy,"few of them had much to say about what makes certain performers or performances so funny. One couldn't help noticing that the only black woman on the special was Phylicia Rashad, who was wonderful in "The Cosby Show"but whose role as the foil for a great man in television comedy doesn't exactly put her in the great-women category; there was not so much as a nod in the direction...
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