How Kristen Wiig Made Me Cry
May is always a tricky month for me, emotionally. It’s allergy season, graduation season, wedding season and worst of all, the end of the yearly television season. As a society, we see our single friends bond into become couples, our children grow up into adults and our favorite faces abandon our weekly boob tube routine. This May has been no different.
This week, along with America’s college seniors, America’s favorite Saturday Night Live actor graduated to a career on the big screen. Much like college, she made me laugh, made me cringe, made me anxious and jealous and envious and proud to be a witness. Most of the time she even made me want to be her. So it makes sense that the last thing Kristen Wiig did on SNL was make me cry–it was the only thing left to be done. Luckily, I can blame any and all tears on the blooming hydrangeas.
I’ve only met a few people who don’t aspire to be as funny or successful as Kristen Wiig and that’s because they’re accountants and no one likes someone who’s funny with money. If I garner half the awe and respect for my career as she has gained for hers, a mere “Kristen Toupee” to her full “Kristen Wiig” if you will–get it? oh I’m not there yet? I’ll work on it?–I’d be a happy, happy girl. I refused to believe the rumors that hit the headlines months ago suggesting she was on the outs in order to pursue a more focused film career. It didn’t make sense. Saturday Night Live seemed to exist for her and her for it. A match made in comedy heaven like that should never be broken. Why would she ever let Kat abandon Garth? What would Hoda Kotb do without Drunk Kathy Lee? And selfishly, I wondered what was I going to do without all her weirdos making me look normal. Target Lady? Penelope? Aunt Linda? Gross Shanna? Mindy Grayson?
As she graduated from Saturday Night Live this past weekend, she summed up her seven years of redefining “character work” by dancing awkwardly with Mick Jagger while holding back tears as a seasoned group of clowns put on their suits and got real for a second to say goodbye and good luck. She’s proved time and time again that she graciously has the world in the palm of her illustrious, hilariously under-sized hand. And that she can hug Jon Hamm as many times as she wants. Good riddance, good luck, you deserve it and call me?
While her final graduation sketch was only a fake ceremony, the look on her face resembled many mixed emotions I’d seen exactly three years before sitting at my own college graduation: Excited faces of students who knew the purpose of going to college was to eventually graduate and move on to bigger things with the knowledge and practice they’d acquire, terrified faces of students who just realized that the purpose of going to college was to eventually graduate and move on to bigger things, nostalgic faces of students who already missed the friends they were sitting next to and smiling, glowing faces acknowledging that they’ve just had the most fun of their entire life. Or maybe it was more the face of a spring allergy sufferer in a windy field of pollen.
There are a lot of articles gracing the internet, especially now after her last show, posing every type of question from “Is she the best female SNL has ever seen?” to “Can she really survive without SNL?” and because this is America, we’re all free to ask and answer. Her movies make money. Her characters are funny. Her website is just a doodle and her name. Again, she’s friends with Jon Hamm. It seems like she’s having fun, creating a life filled with love and friendship and laughter and a lot of hard work that’s paid off so far. All the while, I’m not so convinced she even really cares what anyone else thinks or says. At the same time, there’s a new crop of 22-year-old grads primed for worrying about what people are going to post about their jobs or unemployment or if they’re funny or rich or using the right resume font and I hope they don’t really care either. “There’s no time,” I heard her say. “Catch your dreams before they slip away.”
The only thing left to do now is wait for her “Best Of” DVD to release into pre-order and get my Triangle Sally Halloween costume ready.
