The latest batch of comedy specials worth watching starts with a much anticipated one from Jamie Foxx and includes hours from Matthew Broussard, Anthony Jeselnik and Fortune Feimster.
Jamie Foxx ‘What Had Happened Was …’
In April 2023, news broke that Jamie Foxx had been hospitalized in Atlanta with what his daughter described on Instagram as a “medical complication.” Not much else was revealed, and in the vacuum of information, rumors spread. When a photo of Foxx appeared online, some conspiracy-minded types called it a clone. Katt Williams even jokingly questioned and made fun of his “mysterious illness.”
Now Foxx says he wants to set the record straight. Speaking in a theater a few hundred yards from the hospital where he says his life was saved, Foxx enters wearing sunglasses but takes them off quickly to wipe away tears. He says he experienced a brain bleed, suffered a stroke, temporarily lost the ability to walk and doesn’t remember 20 days of his life. It’s a moving performance that feels like part of a growing trend of how comics deal with medical catastrophe.
Tig Notaro did a famous hour about flirting with death not long after she got a cancer diagnosis. Keith Robinson also turned his two strokes into irreverent comedy. Foxx’s special is a much more polished production and sentimental affair. He tells a few jokes, pays tribute to his family repeatedly (he brings two daughters onstage) and preaches the virtues of prayer and comedy (“If I could stay funny, I could stay alive”).
His most amusing moments involve his gift for impressions, including a riotous imagining of Denzel Washington if he, like Foxx, needed help going to the bathroom in a hospital. Foxx also does an excellent Katt Williams. But this isn’t a stand-up special so much as a celebration, an act of gratitude and the kind of emotive video often posted on Instagram.
Foxx is a charismatic Hollywood star who speaks frequently in the third person. He grapples with his ego here when he refuses to believe what happened (“Jamie Foxx don’t get strokes”), but only to a point. The purpose here is to show that he is back and doing fine. The internet, he tells us, reported that he was paralyzed, that Sean Combs tried to kill him and that he was a fake.
But he tells us he’s too original to be a clone, before listing his credits and performing a greatest hits of characters, whether from his sketch show, “In Living Color,” or the Ray Charles biopic he starred in. Foxx has been through hell, so fans will forgive him his indulgences.
Matthew Broussard, ‘Hyperbolic’
Matthew Broussard’s pleasingly punchy debut hour has an intricate joke about the feet of his fiancée that starts with the predictable rhythms of the Borscht Belt. “Her feet are so big that she has to buy all her shoes online on a website called — how mean is this? — Amazon.com,” he says. Then he pauses for this initial punchline to land with the crowd before immediately reflecting on it. “Silly one,” he says twice, then puts on his comedy critic hat: “That joke is all about delivery. If you don’t get it, you will in one to two days.” Then he takes a beat for one last play on words, wrapping up a long way from where he started.
Broussard, a smooth, handsome comic, specializes in such silly, word-drunk comedy. He makes it look easy, but don’t be fooled: His precisely timed and rarefied jokes are polished to a sheen. These are comedy-nerd bits about subjects you don’t tend to hear comics at clubs ranting about — for instance, the excess of silent letters in the French language. “Remember the first time you saw hors d’oeuvres on paper?” he asks, flabbergasted.
Anthony Jeselnik, ‘Bones and All’
Anthony Jeselnik likes horror movies. You can tell from the giddy brutality of his jokes. In the two decades of his critically acclaimed career, his reputation has aged a little like “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.” At first, all everyone noticed was the shock and violence. Now many, though not all, see the refinement and beauty of his craft. A meticulous formalist, not a provocateur, he is like the director who stages blood baths because he likes the color red.
Jeselnik’s latest hour is packed with crackerjack jokes that make you gasp, then chuckle at yourself. I’ve watched it three times just to see the elaborate ways he sends your expectations one way, then zips the other. His hour (closer to 50 minutes) is not a departure, but it feels churlish to complain. If there is a subject explored here, it’s an eye roll at the current comedy scene, including shots at the cynicism of those who decry cancel culture or weigh in with trans jokes as a cheap way to get attention.
If there is an aspect that feels novel, it’s the maturation of his persona. His arrogant heel turns have become more flamboyant to the point of preposterousness, like a standup version of late-career Nicolas Cage. Wearing shaggier hair than he has in previous specials, he walks in slow motion, draws out vowels and describes the most grotesque murder of a pregnant woman wrapping inside a punchline that has a logic that snaps into place. Then turns to the crowd and asks: “What are you guys laughing at?”
Fortune Feimster, ‘Crushing It’
The comic standout in Fortune Feimster’s latest charming special is her mother, Ginger. She has long been a character in her daughter’s comedy, which folds jokes into personal stories the way someone places notes in books, allowing for pleasant little surprises. Here, Ginger, a small-town Southern lady with a delicate voice, takes center stage as a flamboyant, vivid character, falling for a questionable man, crawling across a cemetery and expressing some reasonable (in my view) opinions about what makes someone rich (ownership of an ice-crushing machine). Beneath the surface of this collection of funny anecdotes is a portrait of an affectionate if tricky mother-daughter relationship.
Trading in her casual black pants and shirt for a bright pink suit, the curly-haired Feimster favors fish-out-of-water scenarios, like accidentally spending her honeymoon with her wife in a country where being gay is illegal or arguing on the quiet train car, which forces her to “mime-fight.” She always makes the best of the situation, projecting well-behaved kid energy. She prefers making do to making a fuss, a quality you can detect in her podcast “Handsome,” with Notaro and Mae Martin.
“I don’t know how this happened, but I somehow became my mom’s husband,” she said, describing how they go on cruises and do other romantic-seeming activities together. This close bond is shaken slightly when Feimster falls in love and gets married, and her mother grows jealous. There’s a story about the chaos a Facebook post can produce that will be relatable to many. Her mother comes off as eccentric but not a caricature. Her feelings about money and love and social media are carefully observed and specific. She’s often the butt of the joke, but this special is an example of mockery being a form of love.
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