Lady Parts

Baroness von Sketch Show alumnae Jennifer Whalen and Meredith MacNeill have elevated joking about women's issues to an art. Their new show, Small Achievable Goals, takes aim at menopause. How funny is that?

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THERE'S SOMETHING cartoonishly indulgent about meeting for oysters and prosecco at noon on a Thursday, but when I asked Meredith MacNeill and Jennifer Whalen to suggest an activity for our first interview, this was their pick. Before any bivalves are ordered, however, we're distracted by the raucous office party taking place a few metres away. It's mid-December, that stretch before the holidays when companies with a discretionary budget gather their staff over insipid finger foods and giant bottles of Jackson-Triggs. This bash, however, is a cut above: it's well before quitting time; the attendees are in the airy back room of Paris Paris on Ossington; at least one of them is wearing an ugly Christmas sweater with the charming awkwardness of Colin Firth's Mr. Darcy in Bridget Jones's Diary. "Do you think it's a start-up?" MacNeill asks. Whalen nods. "There's...a lot of wine," she says.

If this were one of their comedy bits, MacNeill would now volunteer for a reconnaissance mission. Concocting a half-baked noise complaint or an inquiry about the nature of the company, she would purposefully stride past the mullioned dividers and disappear, only to re-emerge 20 minutes later, table-dancing in her bra with that Christmas sweater draped around her neck like Superman's cape. Whalen, meanwhile, would have been part of the bash from the jump-the po-faced COO, perhaps, who must be goaded to hoist a glass but gradually reveals that her inner freak is infinitely freakier than those of her underlings. This kind of madcap energy was part of what made Baroness von Sketch Show-the sharp, unpredictable CBC series co-created by MacNeill, Whalen, and Second City alumnae Aurora Browne and Carolyn Taylor-a smash that ran for five seasons.