Where were they then?: Amy Poehler in the ’90s

While dressed for the present in 1995, Amy Poehler embodied the future for none to see.

Only after Second City slaked the nation’s Parks and Recreation withdrawal in late February 2015 did RVTV arouse any intrigue. That said, when the storied Chicago-based comedy training ground shared a sample on its YouTube channel, a blend of nostalgia and retroactive recognition brimmed across reactionary stubs.

RVTV was a would-be series that went nowhere, yielding only a three-minute sample size for today’s web-goers. But with Poehler as the centerpiece of a saga about hackers using an unmistakably mid-’90s computer within their vehicle to blackmail content producers, its revelation makes it fun to pretend we saw so much coming.

Adam McKay, then a soon-to-be rookie writer on Saturday Night Live, co-wrote RVTV, which was filmed in more or less the same mockumentary format as Parks and Rec a decade-plus later. Poehler and company taped the pilot in Toronto, which is wedged at virtually the halfway mark between her then-Windy City residence and her ideal home of New York City.

Two decades later, the Daily Dot’s Mariel Loveland declared the clip “hilariously ’90s with vests, floral skirts, and nods to the future of the Internet age galore.”

Similarly, Vulture’s Megh Wright singled out “spot-on YouTube and Internet age prophecies” and the reference to then-U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno. (Reno, the first woman to hold that position, was later one of many pioneers adorning Leslie Knope’s office walls.)

FanSided’s Tony Tran focused on the subsequent evolution of the actor and the times, speculating Poehler’s “classic ’90s haircut” in the upload “would probably make her cringe now.”

Conversely, Refinery29’s Lauren Le Vine wrote of Poehler, “We always knew she was ahead of her time, right down to her perfect 1995 eyebrows.”

If those eyebrows did not give away the mid-’90s production time — as opposed to the decade’s latter stages — the lack of AOL noises, iMacs, or parodies thereof did.

Come what may, RVTV resonates with its symbolism of that point in Poehler’s budding career.

The 21st-century Swiss Army knife of a star, creator, writer, director, and producer turns 50 Thursday, which means her 20s ended in the same year as the 20th century.

In turn, her ’90s coincided with that traditional timeframe for one to figure out their life. That process meant venturing from her native New England to the Midwest’s Metropolis, then back out east to where the networks are.

With Poehler as the centerpiece of a saga about hackers using an unmistakably mid-’90s computer within their vehicle to blackmail content producers, RVTV’s revelation makes it fun to pretend we saw so much coming.

But before she started earning her stripes on NBC, Poehler went to BC. For the Braintree, Massachusetts native, the start of the ’90s enveloped seven of eight semesters at Boston College. There she spontaneously answered a call to try out for My Mother’s Fleabag, which resides on the Chestnut Hill campus and proclaims itself the longest-running undergraduate improv club.

Per BC’s student newspaper, The Heights, Poehler naturally rose to a leadership position by her senior year in 1992-93. Tasked opposite her fellow upperclassmen with infusing new blood, she said the ideal candidates were “not afraid to be creative.”

To that end, she led by example through Fleabag’s endeavors and between terms when she went to Chicago’s ImprovOlympic. There she had barely finished her freshman year when she joined Matt Besser, Ian Roberts, and Matt Walsh in launching the Upright Citizens Brigade. Among other brushes with greatness, the quartet absorbed a few lessons from then-SNL fixture Chris Farley.

Back at BC, in a glowing review of a mid-November 1991 performance, The Heights’ James Conner singled out Poehler and Mike Burke for their role in a sketch about a pimple-popping contest. Poehler was one of two play-by-play personalities breaking down the vigorous, messy action in real time and on slow-motion replay. Together with Burke’s, Conner wrote, her “dialogue and interpretations of the race were the highlight of this improv.”

Three months later, Poehler put her name in the campus paper more deliberately. When fellow junior George Hahn submitted a letter to the editor titled “Lack of willingness to understand homosexuality at BC,” she was one of 47 student co-signers and 74 co-sponsors overall.

Upright in a not-the-least-bit-tongue-in-cheek manner in real life (and ahead of the times compared to society at large on that issue), Poehler started reaping long-term fruitful connections no later than when she snagged her B.A. in media and communications. In 1993, through ImprovOlympic founder Chana Halpern, she met a fellow sketch scholar in Tina Fey.

Earlier this year, Vulture’s Lizzie Logan and Jesse David Fox delved into the dawn of that friendship. In the piece, Poehler credited Fey with breaking the ice with “my first beauty lesson.”

The Greater Philadelphian Fey and Greater Bostonian Poehler soon gravitated back to the more familiar East Coast. The latter and her UCB cofounders intended to convert their enterprise from the stage to the small screen.

Around the organization’s 25th anniversary in 2015, Poehler told Today’s Willie Geist, “We always had a big-picture idea of us working together and big dreams, but to be honest it was small little steps of ‘Can we get a stage show up and running in new York’ Can we get someone to come see it? Can we get on TV?’”

The main reason Poehler declined Fey’s persistent invitation to follow her tracks was a desire to see UCB through.

Poehler waited tables on the side until UCB gained genuine traction. By the time it did in the form of a Comedy Central greenlight, effective in August 1998, she had already voiced Mary Hatch in Escape from It’s A Wonderful Life, played a one-off character on ABC’s Spin City, and twice appeared on MTV’s bada-bing, bada-bust Sklar brothers vehicle Apartment 2F.

But most significantly, she had started catalyzing a recurring bit on NBC’s Late Night with Conan O’Brien. Sporting headgear and blonde bunches, she played Andy Richter’s fictional adolescent sister, Stacy, whose appearances followed a reliable pattern concerning her crush on Conan. Her introduction by Andy would set off embarrassment, then a path through hope, ire over inevitable rejection, and apologetic calm with potential for a second wave of rage.

As UCB’s 30-episode run strengthened, Poehler also saw action on The Daily Show (still hosted by Craig Kilborn) and Late Night alongside her castmates. The latter involved another sign of the times, parodying the satellite-TV boom with a look at the Marital Bliss News Network.

Watch MBNN, and you see what Conner must have seen during My Mother’s Fleabag’s pimple-popping competition announcers sketch. You will see why McKay’s first screenplay almost had Poehler as Veronica Corningstone before Christina Applegate won that role. You can also glimpse a preview of the perky Weekend Update co-anchor of the mid-aughts.

Naturally, the latter development was courtesy of Fey, who had joined the SNL writing staff the same year UCB hit CC. The main reason Poehler declined Fey’s persistent invitation to follow her tracks was a desire to see the former through.

Time ran out on that in the spring of 2000. UCB’s third and final season rolled out for three months on the heels of Poehler’s first mainstream movie role, that of Ruth in Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigalow, hitting theaters December 17, 1999.

Hey, as much as this space is about championing the ’90s, we can admit some of us did have bigger, better moments post-Y2K. For the nucleus of RVTV, two decades into this century, it looks like a straightforward transition from good to better.

Poehler’s 50th birthday falls 13 days before the 20th anniversary of her SNL debut — September 29, 2001. That and all that has followed in NBC sketch shows, sitcoms, and construction competitions (Making It) represent first-class deferred gratification by the ’90s.