Whatever you’re doing (besides reading this), I need you to stop and watch this video.
That’s Amber Ruffin, and I would happily listen to her say “you raggedy bastard” all day long. She’s a little like a real-life Ted Lasso if Ted Lasso had a slightly deranged sense of humor. She’s so sunny and seemingly kind and fun and might have a haunted doll collection. Like if Tinker Bell got hopped up on goofballs and wanted to give you a tattoo. She’s funny but a little scary in a way that makes things funnier.
You also might want to prepare yourself for the fact that she’s going to be your newest favorite person. Amber Mildred (yes, that’s her real middle name, and yes, that is a thing I know about her) Ruffin became the first Black woman writer for a late-night show when she joined the staff of Late Night with Seth Meyers in 2014. Yes, the year-of-our-lord two-thousand-and-fourteen as in seven years ago. It’s one of those things that’s not surprising but definitely disappointing. Like finding out that Porsche made an SUV and called it Cayenne. Because of course they did. But instead of bumming us out like a Cayenne, Ruffin decided she’d just become one of the featured performers on the show addressing both racism and Steven Seagal in segments like “Amber Says What.”
Don’t worry though, she does plenty of segments where she’s adorable and sunshine and slightly menacing in a great way while being absurd.
There were more than a few clips I wanted to use, but I settled on this one because her lipstick is amazing. Did you by any chance want her to be even more absurd though?
Amber’s silent-but-full-on belly laugh at 2:55 is my happy place. I want to live inside it. The best part? NBC finally wised up in 2020, and gave Amber her own show on their streaming service Peacock. It’s thirty additional minutes of Amber Ruffin each week which means we only need to figure out how to get 10,050 more.
HOW IS SHE SO FUNNY IN ONLY 13 SECONDS? I need to stress that there are many, many hilarious moments and I would like to show you all of them, but the skit that solidified for me that Amber Ruffin might actually be the best person alive is when she sang this song starting at 5:37.
Amber: You’re not weak, it’s just the week you hit the wall.
Me:
Oh, and the guy she’s singing the song with? That’s her real-life friend and sidekick Tarik Davis. Here is an undisputed fact about Tarik: he’s great. Evidence? He’s real-life friends with Amber Ruffin, and she likes him so much she wanted him to do her show with her.
In fact, all of the previous videos have actually just been building to THE Amber and Tarik clip. The clip that’s so good people should be watching it for… how long is ever? For forever. Watch it and love it for forever…
…after a brief hiatus where Amber went to Tokoo to cover the Olympics for Peacock, where she was unsurprisingly hilarious and kind.
When she returned, she got to do her first show in front of a live studio audience and you guys! It was so good! Amber and Tarik were so excited to be there and the audience was so excited to be there and when she said “Welcome to The Amber Ruffin Show” she got choked up and then I got choked up and her bow tie looked amazing!
It's The @AmbermRuffin Show’s first time with a live studio audience & Amber gets emotional in the first minute of the show.
I’m not crying. You’re crying. pic.twitter.com/EWrNi8P7sN
— Erica Buddington (@ericabuddington) August 15, 2021
I’m crying. I’m doing all of the crying. How do you finish up a show that starts with an intro that makes me sob? With the aforementioned THE Amber and Tarik clip.
They made improv cool. That’s how awesome they are. They took improv, a thing that usually makes me crawl out of my skin so I can hide under it, and made it cool and funny. Because they’re genuinely delightful people who, I assume, would still be making up R&B songs for each other in their living rooms if no one had been smart enough to give them a show. Thank the comedy gods that someone was.
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