The only good thing that happened this year was celebrity impressions

Impressionism is the greatest of the arts. And no, I’m not talking about Monet’s lily pads or whatever he was trying to paint through his foggy glasses. I’m talking about the one and true impressionism: celebrities mimicking other celebrities for our amusement.

I’m talking about Bill Hader doing Conan O’Brien. I’m talking about Chloe Fineman doing Jennifer Coolidge. I’m talking about Rob Brydon and Steve Coogan challenging each other to a Michael Caine-off.

Saturday Night Live’s Marcello Hernandez went niche with his recent impression of standup Sebastian Maniscalco.

People act like celebrity impressions are lowbrow, barely a step beyond asking someone to pull your finger and farting, but those people (who I certainly did not just invent out of thin air) don’t know anything. As a wise person once told me over Slack, celebrity impressions are cultural criticism at its best.

It’s also the only form of comedy that matters. In a ludicrous world, political satire is increasingly toothless. I’ll never understand memes or why my kids think it’s hilarious to yell “67 ” approximately 300 times a day. I have a soft spot for knock-knock jokes – Knock-knock. Who’s there? Charli XCX. Charli XCX who? Ok boomer – but, like dreams, I’d rather tell you mine than hear yours. Which leaves us with celebrity impressions, the whisky neat of comedy.

This year, in particular, was a banner year for celebrity impressions. I was annoyed for most waking moments, except for the times when I was watching celebrity impressions.

In his comedy special Popular Culture, stand-up comedian Brent Weinbach turned a silly bit about recycling paper straw wrappers into a snowballing impression of Michael Jackson for 20-odd minutes. Did you know that Michael Jackson hid the F-word in all his songs? I didn’t, until Brent Weinbach wrapped a disused straw wrapper around his fingers and took me on a beautiful journey of comedic wonder.

On TV, the best thing that happened this year was on The Rehearsal, when Nathan Fielder recreated the life of “Miracle on the Hudson” pilot Sully Sullenberger – from birth and breastfeeding to his obsession with Evanescence’s Bring Me to Life – in an attempt to understand the secret to air safety. Somewhere in our skies right now is a mentally fragile pilot who’s able to open up to his co-pilot, thanks to Fielder’s impression and goth-metal.

In cinema, it was Jeremy Allen White’s impression of Bruce Springsteen sitting on the knee of his abusive dad (played by, who else?, Stephen Graham) that made me chuckle the hardest. I don’t know if it was supposed to be funny, but it was weird – seeing a fully grown Bruce Springsteen sitting on his daddy’s knee, backstage after a gig (surely this didn’t really happen?) – and I always laugh when I’m uncomfortable.

In the podcast world, there was no better medicine this year than listening to Dana Carvey on Fly on the Wall, his podcast with buddy David Spade, making Curb Your Enthusiasm grump Larry David repeatedly guffaw with glee with his over-the-top impressions of Lorne Michaels, Jerry Seinfeld and The Beatles. Carvey – the living guru of celebrity impressionists – has a gift for taking mimicry to its most absurd. If you haven’t spent part of your year thinking of Paul McCartney explaining Kim Kardashian to the ghost of John Lennon, you should fix that.

TikTok is mostly a cesspool interrupted by beautiful content from Romy Mars, but Megan Stalter also made it fun when she debuted her impression of every celebrity who’s been called up this year by pop boy Role Model to be one of his “Sallys” during performances of his exhausting Sally, When the Wine Runs Out. Stalter, the star of Hacks and Lena Dunham’s Too Much, is a master of depicting celebrity desperation, the point where fame and cringe so often meet, that you’ll get the essence even if you don’t get the reference.

Niche impressions, like Stalter’s, are the best. This year, Saturday Night Live provided a smorgasbord, from Sabrina Carpenter portraying the “fire” (or is that “chopped”) kids from the hit podcast MDFoodieBoyz to Marcello Hernandez committing defiantly to an incredible impression of stand-up comedian Sebastian Maniscalco.

And yet for all the show’s success in keeping comedy’s greatest art form alive, it was a Trump impression that ruled them all. James Austin Johnson should have a Pulitzer Prize already for his imitation of Donald Trump, taking something that should be tired and boring and imbuing it with a free-flowing panache that finds new avenues for righteous mockery of the dumbest world leader history has ever known.

His Trump, not unlike the real deal, glides into inane riffs on Alanis Morissette in Dogma or deep-cut Miley Cyrus lyrics. It is poetry in motion, and proof that you can’t spell “impressions” without “impress”. Because they’re impressive, see? Impressive impressions. Sure, let’s end this with that.

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