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As with a lot of distinctive voices, Schumer is a chorus of reverberating undercurrents focused into one set of vocal chords. She’s an observational comic with a gleeful crude streak, someone so skilled at sussing out the boundaries that she knows exactly when to jump over them. Her favourite punchlines have a hint of, “Can you believe I said that?” smirking, but these are outrages with an architecture behind them, the logical endpoint of some skewered absurdity: when she ends a standup routine by crying about the attractiveness of her vagina, it feels like the underlying message of every beauty commercial. (In this respect, her closest analogue is probably Louis C.K., even if she has yet to try to be so openly Profound About Society.)

The overarching theme of her comedy is social expectations, exactly how we’re supposed to act in any given situation. In the case of the show, that’s sometimes literal: there’s a little bit of sketch and a little bit of stand-up, but one of its more low-key but telling features are person-on-the street interviews and a longer interview section. The former involves Schumer coaxing secrets out of game strangers, and speaks to her ability to find out just how uncomfortable people will get while still talking. The latter show her game willingness to go into any corner that seems under-explored, whether it’s phone sex operators or 106-year-old women.

When Schumer sticks to her own voice, she turns to dating, attraction and the things that dictate male and female relationships. They are, naturally, the purest expression of social anxieties and absurd rules, especially now that we pretend it’s a more even playing field. Her first-episode response to the “year of the butt” was a music video based on a children’s rhyme that reminded everyone it’s where poop comes from. Last season, her response to that endless, dumb desire about a woman who’s just one of the guys ended with her heading off to the washroom to “make room,” and a table of guys wondering if they should just sleep with each other already.