I was watching some OPCD and I noticed Noel Wells edited them! I love her! I didn't know she did Cracked stuff!

Noel edited and wrote and performed for Cracked for years. To give credit where credit’s due, Cody Johnston is the one who years ago said “I found this amazing person that I think we should work with.” We agreed.

Noel is that word that I don’t use a lot because I worry every time you use it incorrectly it loses meaning and people stop caring, so I only use it when I really actually believe it, here, now, in the present; she’s an artist. Maybe even an Artist with a capital A. She’s fearlessly creative and original in a way that I can’t understand, the kind of artist where the smartest thing you can do as her supporter is move out of the way and let her create whatever she wants and make sure nothing is distracting her. She edited the first few seasons of OPCD, because she’s a phenomenal editor and made every single god damn script funnier than it was on the page or in the room, but mostly we had her editing so we could always maintain ties with her, because we wanted to be around whenever Noel had an idea (the Manic Pixie Nightmare Girl series is one of my favorite things we’ve run, and it was all born out of Noel’s head). We wanted any bit of anything she had, because that’s what you do when you find an Artist capital A. You give them money and you keep them around other creative people and you give them a place to make the stuff they want to make.

When Saturday Night Live picked her up I thought “Wow, after all these years, SNL still knows what they’re doing, that’s amazing.” And then when they let her get out of their grasp after a year I thought “False alarm. You idiots are going to feel fucking silly five years from now when Noel is the only name that matters in comedy.” 

It’s just a special feeling you get. Sometimes you can watch someone hilarious and you KNOW that they’re hilarious, but you can see all of the… “strings,” I guess I’ll call it. Not puppet strings, but the strings and wires they use in movies during fight scenes that make people fly impossibly. Once in a while when I’m watching a great comedian/writer/performer, I can see the strings, the things I’m not supposed to see– and that most people don’t see– where the strings are the influencers and sources of inspiration and history and familiar blueprints. 

And SOMETIMES, very rarely, you can watch someone and no matter how hard you look, you can’t see the strings. Because there are no strings, because they’re completely and utterly original and singular and that, to me, will always be Noel.