‘Inside Amy Schumer’ Is the One Sketch Show You Shouldn’t Watch in Clip Form

Inside Amy Schumer returns for its fourth season tonight on Comedy Central with the first new episodes since Schumer became a big ol’ movie star last summer with Trainwreck. As with most sketch shows, Inside Amy Schumer tends to take on a familiar pattern in terms of how it is consumed by the public. Often a sketch will get released online before an episode airs — like the Lin-Manuel Miranda sketch that dropped a couple weeks ago. Then the episode itself airs on Comedy Central on Thursdays, with the full episode dropping on Hulu the next day. After that, the most notable sketch(es) tend to circulate around, getting posted on Twitter and Facebook until you feel like you’ve gotten everything worth getting out of the episode.

This is pretty much how we watch sketch shows in the streaming age. From Saturday Night Live to Key and Peele, we tend to eschew full episodes and consume them sketch-by-sketch according to what’s getting passed around. There’s a decent chance that you are a fan of Inside Amy Schumer but have never watched an entire episode all the way through.

This is a mistake.

Unlike a show like Saturday Night Live, where only watching the highlights help make the show seem more polished and consistent than it actually is, watching Inside Amy Schumer solely via clips means you’re missing out on some of the best parts. In any given Schumer episode, the sketched are broken up by one or two man-on-the-street segments where Amy asks New Yorkers various dumb questions, an “Amy Goes Deep” interview, some Seinfeld style stand-up, and then some outtakes at the end. They’re all incredibly funny/interesting/rewarding in and of themselves.

The “Amy Goes Deep” interviews in particular are the kinds of segments that no other sketch shows are offering. You expect them to be these Daily Show-style interviews that mock the interviewee for the benefit of the audience, but Schumer’s not interested in that. These are actual conversations with real people, and while Schumer is still funny, she’s also honestly trying to reach an understanding with these people. Even when it’s an Ashley Madison exec who she clearly wants to rip on a bit, there’s still real conversation there. Other times, there’s no adversarial vibe at all. Just last season, Schumer went deep with a trans woman, a gigolo, a Bachelor contestant, a psychic, and an Amish woman. Sometimes these end up floating around social media in clip form — such as her interview with a 106-year-old woman — but usually they get overshadowed by the sketches.

The man-on-the-street interviews are less enlightening but full of great little moments of interaction between Schumer and the strangers. She has a real talent for interactions with people that feel genuine and funny, which is good, because otherwise she’d only have talents for writing, acting, stand-up comedy, and perfectly deployed vulgarity. Good to know she has something to fall back on.

Full episodes of Inside Amy Schumer are available to stream on Hulu. Watch them all they way through, you won’t regret it.