With her impeccable comic timing and tart-tongued take on the everyday trials of being a woman, New Jersey-born comedian Janeane Garofalo has served as both inspiration and soothsayer for a large swath of American women. Tuesday night, she debuted on the new Bravo sitcom, “Girlfriends’ Guide to Divorce,” where she plays Lyla, an entertainment lawyer who’s the best friend of main character Abby.
Garofalo’s time on “Girlfriends” will be short-lived (she announced she was leaving the show in August), but if her role is anything like her other supporting actress gigs, she’ll leave a hole when she does go. Here’s a guide to a few of her more memorable appearances on TV and in film.
“The Ben Stiller Show.” Ben Stiller’s Fox sketch show only lasted for a season in the early ‘90s, but its ripples were felt throughout comedy — “Mr. Show” collaborators Bob Odenkirk and David Cross, writer-producer powerhouse Judd Apatow, and Dino Stamatopoulos were among its writers and actors. Garofalo’s turn on “Stiller” led to her role as aggrieved booker Paula in “The Larry Sanders Show.” “I was just a stand-up until I was 27,” Garofalo said at a “Stiller” 20th-anniversary reunion in 2012. “My aspiration was, I want to be George Carlin. I didn’t think I could do other things.” Garofalo and Stiller later collaborated on the self-help parody “Feel This Book.” (Watch)
“Janeane Garofalo: Comedy Half-Hour.” In her 1995 HBO standup special, Garofalo embodied the gradual consciousness-raising that was taking place among young women and did so in a way that inspired guffaws, skewering the beauty-industrial complex and other trials to put up with while shining a spotlight on her own self-effacing nature. (Watch)
“Romy & Michele’s High School Reunion.” Mira Sorvino and Lisa Kudrow might have received top billing on this movie, but Garofalo’s acid-tongued former recluse Heather Mooney got a lot of the good lines in this still-charming look at facing adolescent fears. Plus, her knack for physical comedy led to Mooney being one of the most GIF-fable characters from the days when downloading an animated image took almost a minute and tied up a phone line. (And while the idea of her ending up with the hot cowboy isn’t the most progressive happy ending, it showcased her ability to be a romantic heroine in a more satisfying way than the flawed 1996 flick “The Truth About Cats & Dogs.”) (Watch)
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“Reality Bites.” Is this movie about Generation X and its attendant angst hopelessly dated? Only a lamestain would ask. But that makes Garofalo’s performance as Vickie Miner, the best friend of Winona Ryder’s romantically tormented wannabe filmmaker Lelaina Pierce, only more special, and generationally iconic. She used a lunchbox as a purse while pulling shifts at the Gap; she holds her own with dudes who are a bit overly infatuated with their knowledge of pop-cultural minutiae; she has little compunction about singing along to "Tempted" while riding shotgun. If only Lelaina had realized that the two dudes vying for her attention were worth a fraction of the attention she gave to her bestie. (Watch)
“24.” Garofalo initially turned down her role as FBI analyst Janis Gold because of its not-quite-anti-torture sensibilities, but she eventually came around, and her character echoed her reservations (to little avail). Gold’s rivalry with Jack Bauer’s longtime right-hand woman Chloe O’Brian (Mary Lynn Rajskub) popped off the screen, with their comic chemistry providing a bit of a ballast to the show’s hyperserious tone. (Watch)
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“Delocated.” Jon Glaser’s reality TV spoof — about a member of the witness protection program who decided to have cameras follow around his family — twisted things up in its third and final season, though not enough to force Glaser’s ineptly hidden character “Jon” to remove his mask. Among the changes: Network president Susan Shapiro (Garofalo) took over the show’s production, leading to many tense moments and awkward seductions by the show’s principal. (Watch)
“Seinfeld.” The season seven finale, “The Invitations,” is best known for the way it killed off George Costanza’s fiancee, but the subplot where Jerry meets a woman who’s exactly like him, right down to the last neurosis, allows Garofalo to engage in some light mimicry of America’s then-best-known comic. She gets shown the door, but isn’t that the way? (Watch)
Watch the trailer for “Girlfriends’ Guide to Divorce”:
Maura Johnston can be reached at maura.johnston@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @maura.