What’s Worth Watching: ‘Amy Schumer: Live at the Apollo’ on HBO for Saturday, October 17

Amy Schumer: Live at the Apollo (Saturday, Oct. 17, 10/9c, HBO)

No one is enjoying her moment in the zeitgeist more than Amy Schumer. With a hit movie and Emmy under her belt, she soars with brazen gusto in her sensational first HBO stand-up special, which might as well be titled Below the Belt. She never met a taboo she couldn’t tackle head-on

Having built a career on boldly blasting stereotypes of gender, body image and sexuality, Schumer revels in raunch and grody humor with a demeanor that’s somehow both satirically girlish and bluntly ballsy. Though she makes light of how she feels out of place like a “fat tumbleweed” in Los Angeles (“My legs register as firewood”), she’s at home before a worshipful audience on the Apollo stage in New York. Joking with equal passion about sex or food—for her, ordering a small popcorn is “like taking one Advil” (I really can’t quote from most of the sex shtick) —Schumer’s set is a feast of fearless laughter.