In honor of this Guardian piece about Baranski, which opens with a compliment wrapped up in a bizarre insult — and actually includes the words “a trim dancer’s figure that suggests she’s not really one for big lunches” and “far warmer than her glossy exterior suggests” — I decided we should re-celebrate the inaugural member of Drinks With Broads. Christine Baranski is a mad-talented genius. Here, she is at the Golden Globes because she got nominated for her supporting work in Cybill, a show in which she was so good that she is the only thing I remember about it and her magnificence more or less stole from the titular star. She is in The Birdcage. She was on a nickname basis with Stephen Sondheim. She was Mary Sunshine in the Chicago movie. She is Diane freaking Lockhart. She has voiced herself on The Simpsons and hosted Saturday Night Live and has won two Tony Awards. Her costars run the gamut from Robin Williams and Nathan Lane to Denis Leary to Kathryn Hahn to Steve Martin to Meryl to Sarah Michelle Gellar to Robert Redford to.. well, we’d be here all day, and I’m not even at The Good Wife/Fight yet. This woman clearly has STORIES TO TELL. She knows both where the bodies are buried, and her way around an artful dirty joke. She is the alpha and omega of Drinks With Broads. You’d start out with dry and dirty martinis, keep ordering cheese plates to try and soak them up, and end the night having commandeered a piano. It would be Mamma Mia in a cocktail lounge. You’d never want it to end, and you’d be eating McDonald’s and Taco Bell and mainlining coconut water for days to combat the hangover, and would be worth it.
Bow down to the master.