Show:  Friends (The One Where Estelle Dies)

Role:  Helpful Honda-esque dealer

Best Line: Reaction to Janice’s “OH .  MY .  GOD !”

According to her credits, Jane here plays “Ellen,” a real estate agent? who is showing the house next door to the one that Chandler and Monica are planning to buy.  Once there, the Bings run into Janice, who was sort of the Urkel of Friends, but never quite as annoying or loveable.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Play:  The Real Live Brady Bunch

Character Type:  Carol Brady

Best Line:  N/A

A super sweet fan, MC, emailed us this gem: Jane Lynch as Carol Brady in The Real Live Brady Bunch.  In 1992, Jane toured with Chicago’s Annoyance Theater in this verbatim, screen-to-stage version of The Brady Bunch.  The clip here is of the gang – which includes Andy Richter!! -  performing on a Very Special Episode (VSE) of Geraldo. This was way before Geraldo fancied himself a serious journalist and embedded himself with the military to prove it.  The VSE is followed by an MTV clip with Kurt Loder.  The gem-iest of all gems.  Thanks MC!!

Click here to view the embedded video.

Movie:  Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby

Character Type: Mother

Best line:

Ricky bobby’s son Texas Ranger (the other son is named Walker), complaining about picking up trash as a community service: “When do we get to stop doing this, Grandma?”

Lucy Bobby: “Well, I don’t know, honey.  When are you boys going to stop tossing me the radio in the bathtub?”

One of our new goals for 2010 is to convince a friend of ours that Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby is a great, great movie.  Because it really is.  We’re not even rabid fans of Will Ferrell, but we still love this movie.  For those who have yet to see it, Talladega Nights is Days of Thunder if Days of Thunder realized that it was a parody of itself.  Will Ferrell is Ricky Bobby, NASCAR racer; Jane Lynch is Ricky Bobby’s mother.  We’re not sure what the best part is: Jane Lynch’s Southern accent, her long grandma hair, or the fact that she more than adequately holds her own against Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly.  This is the sort of movie that frustrates us, too, because she was so great in this movie, yet it took Glee – three years later – to give her the recognition she deserves. Jonah Hill, we hope you’re counting your blessings.

Ok, another clip – a deleted scene from the movie.  So great.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Movie:  The Fugitive

Character Type: Scully

Best Line:  “Wait a minute … Half of the samples he approved were signed [beat] the day he died.”

This is one of those sweet moments when you’re like, “Jane Lynch was in what?!”  Because even though it makes sense that Jane Lynch has been in everything, it also doesn’t.  How is it possible that she showed up in everything like the gnome in Amelie?

Context:  Jane Lynch begins her career in 1988 with Taxi Killer and Vice Versa.  Five years and two movies later, here she is sharing valuable script time with none other than Harrison Ford in the pretty great movie version of The Fugitive. Harrison Ford, by the by, is pretty much at the height of his career – this is way before Six Days, Seven Nights with our favorite desert wanderer Anne Heche.  Speaking of deserts, Jane explained a little more than a year ago in an interview with The AV Club how this movie is the reason why she came out to our little desert town:

[I]t ended up being kind of a big deal for me. It’s what gave me the confidence to come out to Los Angeles and go, “Maybe I can do this out here.” … The Fugitive, I thought would be my big break too. And actually, … I did hope The Fugitive would lead to something else right away, which it didn’t. But it was really exciting[.]

In The Fugitive, Jane Lynch is Dr. Kathy Wahlund, a doctor who works Dr. Kimble’s [Ford] hospital.  She is very serious, and she is very smart.  She’s Scully to his Mulder: she’s the only doctor who can give him the analysis he needs to solve his case, and she’s the only person he can trust.  For your viewing pleasure, then, Jane Lynch is Dr. Kathy Wahlund at 2:32, cracking the case but not so much a smile, other than one out of disbelief (you’ll see).

Click here to view the embedded video.

“I’m gonna keep on jumpin‘ rainbows until the sun don’t shine

I’ll keep on jumpin‘ rainbows all the time”

I was thus pleased that I could watch Jane in the kind of feel-good, wholesome entertainment that continues to sustain me.  Throw in some George Lopez and call it a day.  Orale!

Character type: Authority figure

Best line: “How much do you weigh?”

Jane is great as a Ms. Hulka, of Camp Hulka’s Rock.  She lifts George physically and psychologically out of his half-assed parenting rut.  (In typical family movie fashion, the movie features a typical cinematic conceit: “Mommy dead, Daddy struggles valiantly to be the sole emotional caregiver.”)

In the same vein as the aforementioned family entertainment,  the next item in my Netflix queue was the family drama/comedy “Tru Loved.” Apparently “Tru” is a nickname for “Gertrude.”  So much better than “Gertie,” really.

The movie centers around a teenage girl whose lesbian parents uproot her from San Francisco to live in Agoura Hills, home to Linkin Park, Incubus, and an overwhelmingly homogeneous caucasian population.  Someone finally befriends her, but he’s a closeted African-American who plays quarterback of the high school football team. Oh, and he wants her to be his “beard.” He puts on daily shows of making out with her in front of his group of friends, who we are led to believe are the popular group on campus.   This I didn’t buy, because truly popular crowds “roll deep.”  That means that there are, like, 20 BFF friends on the roster.  Along the other items in my not-buying-it cart was the awful quarterbacking footage to which we are subjected.  Really?  They couldn’t get ONE good shot of him NOT throwing the ball like a 2 year old?  Audiences aren’t expecting a Peyton Manning reel, but it’s not easy to suspend disbelief when you’re laughing at the guy’s ridiculous follow-through! Orale!

While Jane doesn’t get a lot of screen time, she is hilarious as a dancing beret-wearing artsy teacher for a scene in which Tru imagines all the mayhem and foolishness happening in the teacher’s lounge.  Those of us who have been in a teacher’s lounge know that it’s just a breakroom for the working grunts so that they don’t have to face the horrors of using student restrooms – but when I was a kid, I imagined otherwise.  The movie offers a refreshing, honest commentary on high school rivalries, and gets all huggy at the end with gay-straight alliances and some solid teen acting on par with DeGrassi.

Character type: Whimsical authority figure

Best line (to a colleague who happens to be Alex Mapa from Entourage):

“If you were doused with kerosene and lit on fire you couldn’t be any more flaming than you already are every single day.”

The Cleveland Show

As we mentioned earlier, Jane Lynch popped up on The Cleveland Show earlier this week, playing an animated teacher to Roberta Tubbs, Cleveland Brown’s step-daughter.  As Ms. Eick, she’s tough (she gives Roberta her first C-) and lecture-y (she schools (heh, schools) Roberta a bit about tardiness).  Also, her boob drops (“Ignore that”).  In the end, she challenges hot Roberta to succeed in life without relying on her awesome good looks to get away with her mistakes, deficiencies, and poor life choices.  Awesomely, Ms. Eick gives Roberta a fat suit to test drive – yes, a la Tyra.  A la Tyra so much that Roberta dubs her more bountiful self “Tyra” in her search for How the Other Ninety-Nine Point Nine Nine Percent Lives.

Jane Lynch was wonderfully sardonic, sarcastic, and sincere in her grudging admiration for Roberta.  Her voice is scratchy, like her nails/claws on the chalkboard.  The full episode can be watched for the next few weeks here on Hulu.

Here goes, all courtesy Yvanka.  You guys are making this easy for us.  Keep ‘em coming!!

NEWSRADIO: “The Cane”
Character Type: Secretary (the ballsy kind)
Best Line: N/A

NewsRadio was kind of a great show, I thought.  Maura Tierney, as always, was lovely; Dave Foley was not yet the oafish posturing d-bag he became circa Celebrity Poker Showdown; and Phil Hartman, in his post-SNL prime, was playing the kind of Phil Hartman role only Phil Hartman was meant to inhabit.  In this episode, Jimmy James – the bossman – calls all the WNYX employees together for a staff retreat.  Lisa and Dave (Tierney and Foley, respectively) have a bit of a tiff, professional/personal relationship issues, etc.  It all works out in the end, and we all win because we get to see JL with big shoulderpads and a swagger.  Only for a moment, but still.

She, as Carol the secretary, interrupts the ‘retreat’ to deliver a hand-written note to Jimmy James (08:02).  She’s all “Excuse me sir, sorry sir, yes sir,” but she does it with a little “We all know who really runs this office, but you sign my check so I’ll patronize you” in her tone.  Or maybe that’s just me.  Also she gets to walk across the room and look good doing it, shoulder pads and curly hair and all.  Hello, Carol, lookin’ good.

And then, bonus! A throwaway appearance a little later – no lines, just a visual. Gander at 15:12. Remind you of a certain Sue Sylvester zoot suit?  Yes, I thought so.

[From the editors: This episode actually was pretty damn funny, so if you have 25 minutes to spare, this isn't a bad way to spend it.]

:: Drumroll :: Without further ado, Yvanka’s review:

Character type: Authority Figure (coach)

Best line: “We’re on our backs, knees are apart, pelvis contracted forward, aaaaaaand, release.”

IMDB tells us that Ms. Lynch played ‘Tammy’ on an episode of Empty Nest, the Golden Girls spinoff that was a fairly popular mainstay from 1988-1995.  The show focused on Dr. Harry Weston, a pediatrician and a neighbor of Dorothy, Blanche, Sophia and Rose in beautiful Miami.  The premise? He’s a widower, and his two daughters, both grown, have come back to live with him after their own marriages went to crap.  Generally a series of dates for the daughters, Barbara and Carol, with set-ups for Harry, a sprinkling of not-quite PC southern black woman stereotyping in Harry’s nurse, and a man-whore neighbor.  I actually watched this show, back in the day.  Oh, Harry, you’re so cantankerous!

Well, Carol’s pregnant, and she keeps thinking she’s having the baby, but no.  She isn’t.  That’s about all you need to know, contextually.  Jane Lynch plays the lamaze coach, ‘Tammy’, and she’s appropriately poofy-haired, thick-lensed and lecture-y at Carol’s in-home lamaze class.  At least, I think that’s what she looks like… the texture of the video is something like watching television through both a screen door and pudding.
JL is using her Tilex commercial announcer-y voice, wearing an open denim shirt over a tee (all the rage in the early nineties), and has the following just-right line that made me laugh like a pubescent boy:

“Well then, let’s review some of our exercises, starting with the push.  We’re on our backs, our knees are apart, pelvis contracted forward, aaaaand release.  Good!  Forward, and release.”

(That’s what she said.  I know, I’m a child.  Forgive me.)

JL then leads the class in some shallow breathing (hee hee hooo!) and is forced to make the best of some crappy writing, wherein  this ridiculous show makes a predictable dork-assed joke featuring Dreyfuss the dog.  “Well, now he’s got it perfectly!”  Sigh.  And then Rachelle, a lamazee, isn’t doing it quite right – “No, Rachelle, you’re GASPING.” – because, of course, she’s actually about to pop.  Aaaand that’s about all we get of Tammy the Lamaze Coach, and about all of this video I can watch without needing a barbituate.  Check out the squinty-making clip linked [below]; Ms. Lynch features prominently in minutes 5-8.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Webseries:  Supermarket of the Stars and Easy to Assemble

Character Type:  Knowledgeable co-worker and Swedish authority figure, respectively.

Best Lines:

• “Well, back in my day, I had to dress like a man to get a promotion.  I got a crewcut, I wore a suit, I bandaged my chest … of course, for me, it was a life choice.”  (Supermarket of the Stars)
• “Välkommen to Ee-kay-a!”  (Easy to Assemble)

Once upon a time (i.e., last year), Illeana Douglas apparently got tired of being out of work and pitched a series called Supermarket of the Stars to the Oxygen network.  It starred her as a Hollywood star wanting to go back to the peoples by working at an upscale grocery store in Los Angeles.  Our guess is that her circle of friends is very different than, say, Lindsay Lohan’s circle of friends.  How else to explain the appearance of Justine Bateman (aka Mallory from Family Ties) as a fellow disgruntled star; Jeff Goldblum as a not-so-secret shopper; and our very own Jane Lynch as an old-timer grocery store clerk who lavishes her role as experienced mentor to the stars?  Oxygen passed on the show – apparently, it didn’t fit in with the rest of a lineup that included Tori & Dean: Inn Love and Dance Your Ass Off.  Clearly, America is not ready for a post-Lifetime cable channel.  Oprah, as usual, was ahead of her time.

Jane is pretty frumpy and funny as the all-knowing co-worker in Supermarket of the Stars.  Actually, the entire series isn’t half bad at all, and Jane pops in and out here and there.  Episode 1 is below.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Next, Illeana decided that the Supermarket of the Stars was hiring too many stars, and was turning into something she didn’t like as it grew in popularity.  Hard when supermarkets go corporate.  She decides to move on to another local business to fill her application for street cred: the Burbank Ikea.  For those of you who do not live in our cement jungle that is Los Angeles, Burbank is located east of Hollywood and is the choice Ikea for filming.  We like to imagine/hope that the next time we go to Ikea, we’ll find Jane Lynch sitting ironically on a Janne while she busily types away at her BESTÅ BURS, as if it really were her office.

In Easy to Assemble, Jane makes a brief live appearance as Ileana’s supervisor, then shows up in a training video valkommen-ing Ileana to Ikea.  Overall, we don’t think Easy to Assemble is as good as Supermarket of the Stars; regardless, it’s worth it to see Jane Lynch pulling of a Swedish accent.  Hat tip to Vice Versa contributor Marie for pointing us to this series.

Character Type:  Authority Figure (principal/mother)

Best Line: “You think I don’t know what you are?”

There was a time when The X-Files was a really good show.  An outstanding one, in fact.  Really.  By the time Jane Lynch made her appearance in The X-Files, the series, unfortunately, was limping on both legs towards its overdue finale.  David Duchovny exited at the end of Season 8, and the creators (and Fox) stupidly tried to hand the torch off to another pair of investigators.  The idea was, Robert Patrick and Annabeth Gish would play new agents in the X-Files division and continue the investigations after Duchovny and Gillian Anderson left the show.  Robert Patrick was supposed to play the skeptic.  This was a mistake from the start, no doubt because everybody knows that he was totally a mighty morphing terminator, advanced model T-1000, sent from the future to the present in Terminator 2.   Annabeth Gish was to play the believer, Monica.  But, she was not well-received, and she has gone down in X-Files history as Moronica.  We’ll leave it at that.  So, sadly, even though it would have been totally awesome if Jane was Mrs. Paddock in Season One’s “Die Hand Der Verletz”, “Lord of the Flies” was what she was served.  Hey, Piggy didn’t choose to be on the island either.  Overall, she actually has a fairly sizable part, an integral piece to a (flat) story, and her dramatic/scary acting chops are solid.

The episode begins with two boys setting out to do dumbass things for entertainment.  Guess what their cable tv show is called?  That’s right, Jackass Dumbass!  This is very unlike that episode where Mulder and Scully showed up on Cops, because, unlike Jackass, Cops is as timeless as quality jewelry.   One of the two Dumbasses dies, the left side of his head caved in like a deflated basketball.

You're not fooling anyone, John Doggett.

T-1000 and Moronica are called in by a panicky medical examiner who is too scared to do the autopsy for fear of being sued by the boy’s parents.  Obviously, Thomas Noguchi was not one of his role models.  And, although neither T-1000 nor Moronica are doctors, when the boy’s eyelid starts moving, Not-Noguchi still refuses to touch the boy.  Moronica – because she’s down with the paranormal like that – pries open the eyelid and out come a bevy of flies!  What to do?

Scully!!  Scully is not afraid of aliens or lawsuits.  This is how the FBI should function, generally.  Leave tort reform to the professional lawyers-turned-legislators.

She autopsies.  Apparently, the flies in his head laid so much crap and were feeding at such a high rate that his head caved in.  Yes, that makes perfect sense, thank you Scully.  A fly expert, Dr. Rocky Branzino, saunters in, and he is exactly what his name sounds like he is.  He at once tells us all about the ordinary house fly that pooped Dumbass’ head.  He hits on Scully.  He is the audience’s proxy.  We all want to hit on Scully.

THIS IS WHERE JANE LYNCH COMES IN: At school, a lonely boy who we’ll call Gregor (you’ll see why, but I’m going to assume that you already know where this is heading) sits at a lunch table by himself.  You know, I don’t know where these schools get all these lunch tables.  Is overcrowding and 35:1 teacher-student ratios uncommon in the rest of the country?  At my high school, there was never ever a lunch table for anyone to sit by themselves in.  Density brings people together.  This is the mentality behind West Los Angeles, anyway.

The living Dumbass harasses him, after he harasses dead Dumbass’s girlfriend, who Gregor clearly is in love with.  Before things get too far:

Thar she is!  Jane Lynch is Principal Lokensgard (“Of course she had to have a super Norwegian-sounding name,” one of our friends pointed out.), and, luckily for Gregor, she saves him from getting beat up.  Why?  Because in addition to being the principal, she also happens to be his mom.

Suspicion falls naturally on living Dumbass, but the suspicion is dispelled quickly when he is attacked by bugs that spell “D-U-M-B-A-S-S” on his backside.  Ouch, it’s as if Charlotte had spun “F-A-T-S-O” above Wilbur.  Scully suggests that lice epidemics are prevalent in high school environments.  Ok, I don’t say this often, because I “L-O-V-E” Scully, but, Don’t be a dumbass, Scully.  I mean, really.  These bugs are spelling bee-ing on this kid’s back.  T-1000 says as much, and Moronica’s power of intuition tells her that Dumbass isn’t involved, but Gregor is, because he was present for most of the attacks.

Our beloved Professor Whitebread

In law school, I had the best Criminal Law and Procedure class with a great, great professor named Charles Whitebread (R.I.P.).  In addition to teaching us that murder in the first degree indeed is a possibility in a game of Russian roulette (“Folks, if you do not understand that a gun with one bullet in it is a deadly weapon, you will have trouble in this class.  You will have trouble on the bar exam. You will have trouble in life. You will not own a home.”), he also taught us not to ever sneeze, spit, lick, or otherwise leave any bodily residue on a tissue that is offered to you by the cops during an interrogation.  Leave no DNA behind, people.  Poor Gregor is too young to have had this class, and/or has never watched a Law and Order episode, because he totally accepts T-1000’s Kleenex and wipes his greasy, sweaty face during his interrogation.  Jane Lynch interrupts the questioning – hey, aren’t you supposed to question minors with their parents present? – and deems the interrogation over: “Nobody questions my son in my office without my permission!”  The arrogance she has as an authority figure in comedy situations translates very well as indignation in dramatic ones.  The interrogation really stops when we find Gregor covered H-to-T (that’s head-to-toe in Tyra-speak, as in, you model, bugs or no bugs, from head to toe) in flies, as densely populated as a freshly laid dog turd.

Moronica insists that the whole H-to-T thing was staged.  They bring Gregor’s tissue over to Scully, who in turn carries the tissue in a little loaf pan-looking receptacle straight to Dr. Rocky’s lab.  The tissue causes Dr. Rocky’s fly-pheromone-o-meter (used to collect circumstantial evidence, I guess) to go haywire, and he is very, very excited at this “motherlode” of fly pheromone.  The investigators tell him of their theory.  “A boy is a boy. A bug is a bug. You can’t have it both ways,” Rocky exclaims in response to Mulder Moronica’s theory.  Apparently, Dr. Rocky’s been reading so many anthropology books that he missed The Metamorphosis.  He also missed the 1980s.  Who hasn’t watched Jeff Goldblum’s finest performance as The Fly??

Meanwhile, Gregor’s crush is totally trying to make out with him.  This has to be the shortest mourning period ever.  Their kiss is unfortunately interrupted – Gregor’s mouth is some sort of bug weapon, and she leaves screaming and bloodied.  Just as she’s running off, Dumbass and his crew roll up, take Gregor and demand to know how he killed dead Dumbass.  Gregor obliges; now that his hormones are officially out of control, he’s going to skip the spelling lesson and go straight to the killing:  he opens his mouth and some pretty nasty spider leg-type things crawl out.  This is the scariest part of the whole episode, although not as scary as that one time a guy opened his mouth and grew another head.

Next thing you know, T-1000 finds Dumbass and his crew trapped in a cocoon-type thing.  Despite their present circumstances, they can communicate very clearly and articulately, helpfully informing T-1000 that Gregor is, well, Gregor Samsa.  T-1000 rings up Scully and asks what she’s doing.  She’s cutting her toenails, idiot.  I always hated this about the writers – for some reason, they could not have Mulder politely inform Scully that they have a situation and would she please come to the crime scene to render her expert opinion?  Instead, you have Mulder calling up Scully and demanding, “What are you doing?  You better get down here right now.”  Infuriating.  T-1000 pulls the same crap here, telling Scully that she better come over to take a look at the boys for herself.

We cut to the next scene involving Moronica trying to protect the crush before Gregor gets to her, so we don’t see Scully’s reaction to the cocooned car.  If we did, I’d imagine it would have been something like, “Oh, T-1000, if only you were with Mulder and me that one time we were spun into a cocoon by carnivorous nocturnal bugs in a Season 1 episode that was similar to, but infinitely better than, this one.”

Meanwhile, back at Gregor’s home, Jane Lynch catches Dr. Rocky poking around her attic.  Guess what!  Oh, you probably guessed.  Yeah, she’s Mama Fly!  Like mother, like son: she opened her mouth real wide, and, well, see for yourself:

Heredity freak genes are often a theme in this show.  If we ever, ever run into Jane Lynch, we are totally going to ask her about how they shoved a bug down her throat.  She comes downstairs to find her son and his crush.  Presumably, he kidnapped his crush from her home and returned home to, I don’t know, change his clothes?  Replenish his bug serum? (Professor Whitebread: “What are the elements of a kidnapping?  One, you need a kid.  And two, you need a napping.”) (ok, another one, this time about the law on bestiality: “Don’t love them, don’t hate them, they don’t love you”).  Gregor tries to pull some macho-fly-man shit on her (Jeff Goldblum never did this.  You should mind your elders, kid.).  Mama Fly is unnerved.  Sauntering down the stairs, she asks, “You think I don’t know what you are?” It’s her sexiest line, and she does it well.

The episode concludes (finally!) with a classic Scully Narration:  Mama Fly killed her husband to hide her secret; she and Gregor evade their captors and take off, seemingly never to be found again; and Dr. Rocky, “in his expert opinion,” concludes that the family were weird animal/human hybrids.  Chris Carter via Scully continues with his classic Over Philosophizing About the Nature of Nature:  blah something about the nature of man and bug and the fine line between chaos and nature blah the book was better blah.

The real take-away point:  Scully and Jane Lynch share zero screen time together.  Zilch.  I haven’t been this disappointed since Jodie Foster guest starred on the show, but only in the haunting voice of Betty the Tattoo.  Actually, the insane guy whose arm was branded with Betty ended up having sex with Scully, so even Jodie Foster-the-tat got more Scully action than Jane did.  I guess I am going to have to watch all those L-Word episodes to see Jane get any.  Ugh.  Fine.

Jane Lynch was great in this – decent lines, good dramatic chops, and totally freaky when she had to be.  It’s always so great, and too rare, when she has the opportunity to channel all her inner charm, mischief, and delusional arrogance into a creepy, disciplined freak.  I mean, you almost didn’t see her metamorphosis coming.  Almost.

Next up: no, not the L-Word just yet, but a small bit part in an episode of Married With Children.  Thank God, if we had to watch any more seconds of canned laugh/whooping soundtracks, our ears would burn off.

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