Cockeyed Optimist.(Amy Poehler)

Is there a more appealing performer on television than Amy Poehler? Yes, "appealing" sounds bland and unappreciative, and it's unspecific, but the radiance and the warmth that come from Poehler are general and broad in the best way, and they offer a universal welcome. There's no entrance fee of coolness or hipness for enjoying her humor, and you don't hate yourself afterward. In turn, her audience wishes her well; of all the cast members on "Saturday Night Live" in the past ten years or so (Poehler was on the show from 2001 to 2008), she's probably the one whom people most love to love. Every comedian is saying, "Hey, look at me!" Poehler's characters, in addition to that, seem to be saying, "Hey, let's go hang out at my house after school and have some snacks! Yay!" Her performer's demand for attention and need for control get acted out in characters who display relentless and mostly cockeyed enthusiasm--they're people who are desperate to bubble over. That's where Poehler's edge is--the place where her inclusiveness meets the "me me me" of the comedian's ego. She wants you to come and play, but she'll be the one who decides what snacks you're going to eat, what games you're going to play, and what time you have to go home. That's how she could be just right when she played Dakota Fanning as a talk-show host on "S.N.L.," breaking down the child star's unsettling self-presentation into its components of innocent bubbliness and burning ambition.

But, while Poehler's impressions on "S.N.L." were wicked, they weren't usually cruel (unless it can be considered cruel to call attention to a politician's phoniness or a celebrity's self-absorption). They weren't necessarily all terrific, either, or dead on. Her seeming good nature may have prevented her from truly nailing Hillary Clinton during the campaign last year; the words were right, the attitude was right, but something was missing--and perhaps it's difficult to know how far to go in skewering someone when you know that your boss is going to invite that person to come on the show. (Tina Fey's killer takedown of Sarah Palin was ever so slightly less sensational the night that Palin appeared on the show.) In any case, Poehler's performances had a spirit that didn't depend on pinpoint accuracy; her forte is showing the chaos that is about to, and sometimes does, break through even the most apparently composed characters. The best part of her take on Clinton had to do with expressing the way Clinton's not quite getting what she wanted made her, underneath it all, crazed.

To old-time watchers of "S.N.L.," Poehler was Gilda Radner and Jane Curtin rolled into one. And you always felt in good hands during a Poehler skit; unlike some of the other performers--the men of recent years come to mind--she never seemed sloppy or on the verge of being downright awful. As was also true when watching Phil Hartman, another reliable, all-around player, you never thought, Man, how did she ever get on this show? She also rocked, doing an awesome rap number during the "Weekend Update" segment when Palin was on--a loudly percussive litany of ridicule, ending with Poehler standing behind a seated Palin and stabbing the air with her index finger to the sound of gunshots, throwing all her weight into it, in homage to Palin's hunting habit. The Governor may have felt as if she'd been poked in the eye with a sharp stick; to a viewer it didn't seem cruel, just brave. (It was impressive in another way as well: Poehler, limber and always on the beat during the number, was pregnant to the max, and gave birth just a week later.)

Poehler has been doing improvisational comedy for about half her life (she's thirty-seven), and you sense that what drives her isn't quite the need to entertain but, rather, a desire to perform, to keep getting better at her craft. She still does improv in a ...