Molly Cheek

Molly Cheek plays Nancy Bancroft on It’s Garry Shandling’s Show, the 1980s Showtime meta-sitcom that treats the studio audience, the theme song, and the fourth wall as props. This is the theme to Garry’s show — and he will tell you so, then walk through the wall. Cheek’s Nancy is household weather: the person the experiment still has to live with.

Molly Cheek makes Nancy Bancroft a person you can schedule on It's Garry Shandling's Show (Showtime, 1986–1990). Neurotic cable comedy inventing self-aware grammar. Molly Cheek keeps the hour from collapsing into a poster of someone else. That is the 1980s job on Showtime: the 1986–1990 run, Nancy Bancroft, Molly Cheek still in the furniture. Molly Cheek remains Nancy Bancroft on It's Garry Shandling's Show (Showtime, 1986–1990), the temperature the hour still uses.

Molly Cheek should be watched from s01e01 forward. The Day Garry Moved In is the theme made flesh: he walks through the wall, Showtime treats the audience as a prop. Molly Cheek turns at s02e01: Who's Poppa? is season two's parent-title: neurotic cable comedy inventing the self-aware sitcom grammar Sanders would later weaponize. Molly Cheek after the novelty tax is s02e08 — It's Garry Shandling's Christmas Show names the series as a holiday special: meta-sitcom, the fourth wall still a door.

Neurotic cable comedy that invents the self-aware sitcom grammar a later desk would make famous. Cheek sells the meta as a marriage. On TV Flash she is 1980s catalog craft — the Bancroft who made a wall-breaking hour feel inhabited, and the reason the series still photographs as a household instead of a stunt.