Midway through “Jerrod Carmichael Reality Show,” the comedian tries to convince Jamar Neighbors, his longtime friend and fellow standup, to deepen his act by using his unhappy past as material. Neighbors, who prefers an energetic, joke-focused performance (his act includes doing back flips onstage), is skeptical about what he calls “therapy comedy.” Why should he dwell on his foster mother, he asks, when “Jeff Bezos is going to space”?
“Yeah, but also Jeff Bezos is going to space because it’s some [expletive] he can’t talk to his mama about,” Carmichael says. “It always comes back to that. You’re not just going to space.”
In “Reality Show,” a captivating, introspective, sometimes uneasy docuseries beginning Friday on HBO, Carmichael does not go to space. But he does go boldly, bringing family, friends and lovers on an exploration of what it means to live honestly and how it feels to deal with the repercussions.
In “Rothaniel,” his 2022 comedy special, Carmichael came out publicly as gay. But that intimate and revelatory show was about more than sexual identity. It was about secrets, not just Carmichael’s being gay (and its effect on his relationship with his conservative Christian mother, Cynthia), but also his family history of deceptions, including his father, Joe, having had a second family when Carmichael was young.
“Rothaniel” (the title comes from Carmichael’s actual first name, which he also revealed) was in part about how even open secrets can be corrosive, about what living in a state of knowing-but-not-saying does to you.
“Reality Show” is an effort to undo that, in front of an omnipresent camera crew. The Carmichael that we see here is making up for lost time. “I came out late in life,” he says. “I was like basically 30. So I’m like, in gay years, I’m 17.”
Part of this is about being sexually open. He hooks up with men he meets online; he confesses his feelings for his friend Tyler the Creator (who in the past maintained an ambiguity around his own sexuality); he begins a serious relationship but cheats on his boyfriend, Mike, and the connection to his own father’s infidelities is not lost on him.
It’s also about the consequences of being honest. In the first episode, he’s preparing to attend the Emmys, where he will win a writing award for “Rothaniel.” Even in his moment of triumph, he’s anxious about his mother, whom he’s close to yet feels rejected by. After he wins the Emmy, she leaves him a 21-second voice mail message that, he tells the audience at a standup set, he’s afraid to listen to. “That’s too long,” he says. “There’s no way I can picture my mom speaking for 21 seconds without quoting Leviticus.”
“Reality Show” is not a standup special, though there’s standup interspersed in it. (Or rather sit-down; Carmichael now favors a seated posture and a conversational tone with his audience.) It is self-reflective, occasionally to the point of self-indulgence. It’s not a comedy though it is funny, sometimes, because Carmichael is funny (see his tossed-off psychoanalysis of Bezos). It is uncomfortable, very often — also like his comedy.
But the eight episodes are not unlike the installments of an autobiographical, auteurist sitcom. Carmichael, as producer of the show and his life, gives each one a theme, sometimes setting up situations for himself that impel conflict.
In one episode, Carmichael brings his boyfriend home to North Carolina to meet family; in another, the couple try an open relationship. Carmichael takes his father on a road trip, eventually raising a conversation about Joe’s infidelities. The last episode brings his mother — the final boss of his emotional challenge — to visit him in New York and talk through her feelings about his sexuality, and his feelings about her feelings.
Carmichael has gotten his relatives on camera before, in a pair of 2019 HBO short documentaries. In “Home Videos,” he talked to women in his family about topics ranging from the sexualization of Black women’s bodies to R. Kelly’s scandals. “Sermon on the Mount” focused on the social expectations of men in general and Black men in particular, circling back, inevitably, to his father.
Both films are more outward-directed than “Reality Show,” with Carmichael taking the role of interviewer or staying off camera altogether. But at times, it feels like he is testing the waters. In “Home Videos,” Carmichael asks his mother whether she’s ever been attracted to women and adds, “I’ve hooked up with dudes before.” She laughs and says, “That’s your option. That’s not mine.”
In “Home Videos,” Carmichael lets the moment pass. In “Reality Show,” he presses, giving no one an out, including himself. The series culminates in his mother’s visit, a moving, complex interaction that finds him balancing the desire to confront her about how she’s hurt him with the yearning to reconnect.
There is, of course, a power dynamic in the series; the cameras answer only to Carmichael. (This is underscored by the meta conversations he has with an anonymous friend, who will only agree to be filmed masked and with his voice distorted.) As Carmichael tells it, the “impulse to record” is a prod to keep himself honest — “I’m trying to self–‘Truman Show’ myself’” — and a way to equalize the emotional sway that family holds over you, no matter how much money you make or how many awards you win.
And Carmichael, whose comedy can be dryly self-critical, also turns the lens on himself. He talks about how he can be cold and avoidant; he calls himself “a pretty selfish friend” (and provides evidence to that effect); he confronts his infidelities and suggests that he uses sex “to escape.”
“Reality Show” is not escapist; it doesn’t allow the catharsis of laughter as often as a comedy special like “Rothaniel.” But it feels deeply a part of Carmichael’s larger project of provocation and self-revelation. Comedy is not just about getting laughs, after all; it’s about getting a reaction. That’s what “Reality Show” does, powerfully, by asking: Have you heard the one about the guy who decided to stop having secrets?
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