10 Moments That Made Tina Fey & Amy Poehler The Best Comedy Duo Ever

Even though they had spent their early comedy days playing opposite each other in a Second City touring company, Tina Fey and Amy Poehler didn’t get much of an opportunity to work together onscreen during their early days on Saturday Night Live. As the show’s head writer, Fey spent most of her time crafting comedy and throwing brilliant barbs from behind the Weekend Update desk with Jimmy Fallon.

In 2003, Fey wrote a pitch perfect commercial spoof called “Mom Jeans.” The female-centric idea meant that all four of the show’s female cast members — Fey, Poehler, Rachel Dratch, and Maya Rudolph — had to come together to pull it off. It turned out to be one of the most hilarious commercial parodies the show has ever done.

Tina & Amy first became an official comedy duo on October 2, 2004. That’s when they appeared on Weekend Update together as co-anchors for the very first time. Their first bits? Making light of the Bush/Kerry Presidential debates. Later, James Gandolfini crashed the segment as Tony Soprano weighing in on New Jersey Governor Jim McGreevy’s scandalous resignation. You check out the whole segment and the entire episode from 2004 by clicking here.

The most striking thing about Poehler’s debut? Well, probably the fact that the two were united as pals from the get go. They wouldn’t try to snap at each other or debate. They supported each other through and through. If you want proof, look at how Fey cheered a nervous Poehler on after landing her first joke.

Technically speaking, Baby Mama isn’t a moment, it’s a movie. Still, the film came out in a time when Hollywood was still an unbearably hostile environment for funny women. Christopher Hitchens had just written a scathing editorial laying out the “logic” for why women can’t as witty as men.

Baby Mama was a big deal. It was a buddy comedy starring two women and it helped pave the way for superstars like Kristen Wiig, Melissa McCarthy, and Amy Schumer. If the film has one failing it’s that it pits the duo against each other for far too long. I wrote in January:

Nevertheless, the film set them up to be the queens of American comedy.

The moment that tipped Amy and Tina into legend was a sketch that almost didn’t happen. As Fey relays in her memoir Bossypants, she was too busy working on 30 Rock to even consider returning to SNL to play Palin. Lorne Michaels, however, persisted and paired Fey with Poehler for this gem of a cold open. Fun fact: Fey did not write any of these Palin sketches; Seth Meyers is the man behind them all.

Fey and Poehler followed up their triumphant Palin/Clinton bit with an equally juicy piece of political satire. Once again, Seth Meyers penned a cold open that would feature Tina Fey’s version of Sarah Palin squaring off against Poehler, but this time, a visibly pregnant Amy played Katie Couric. The sketch mocked Palin’s weak 60 Minutes sit-down with Couric where the Alaskan politician stumbled on questions about foreign policy and current events. The cruel and brilliant twist to the sketch? Many of Fey’s lines weren’t jokes mined from the brain of Meyers; They were transcribed from the real interview itself.

After they both left Saturday Night Live to headline their very own groundbreaking NBC sitcoms, Tina Fey and Amy Poehler didn’t find themselves working together all that much. So, they took advantage of every opportunity they could to regroup and make us laugh.

Case in point: “Jersey Floor.”

It could have just been another silly installment of a Late Night With Jimmy Fallon spoof, but it turned into a beautiful and raucous SNL family reunion. Also, I just really, really like it.

After noticing how Tina Fey and Amy Poehler stole the show at a slew of awards shows they weren’t hosting, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association got the hint and hired them to host the Golden Globes. Beautiful history was made and so…

…they were invited back to host the next year where they did an even better job cracking jokes and emceeing the ceremony.

Tina and Amy were asked to host the Golden Globes for a third time this past year and they positively killed it. How well did they do? Well, they retired from the gig because it would be impossible to do it again and be better because they were perfection.

And so, we come to Sisters. The movie marks a milestone for the duo because they are switching their usual roles. Fey has always marked herself as our generation’s most acerbic wit and the heir apparent to Dorothy Parker. Poehler, on the other hand, is an exuberant team player always up for fun and always producing the most gleeful type of funny. In Sisters, Fey plays the wild child and Poehler the straight-laced good girl. This switcheroo highlights the comedy titans’ respective ranges and proves that their chemistry isn’t based on a Vaudeville template, but on the felicity of truly understanding how to set each other up for the best possible jokes.