What does the potential sale of Warner Bros. Discovery mean for stand-up comedy?
It’s not the most important question about the proposed deal, in which Netflix would acquire the venerable film and television company. But the Warner Bros.-owned HBO has one of the great comedy legacies in pop culture, helping launch the modern stand-up special half a century ago with “An Evening With Robert Klein” and producing game-changing hours from stars like Eddie Murphy and Chris Rock.
To be sure, the landscape is more crowded today and the HBO special does not dominate the field as it once did. But it has carved out a niche as an alternative to the megastore aesthetic of Netflix, providing a home for artier, more high-concept work by comedians like Jerrod Carmichael and Hannah Einbinder. Even if Netflix — or Paramount, which is mounting a hostile bid for Warner Bros. Discovery — kept HBO as a distinct platform, it’s fair to worry that the brand would change or get watered down. A look at two recent HBO releases suggests what could be lost.
Comedy often tiptoes into horror, but never has it so aggressively courted its ickier, Cronenbergian pleasures than with the new hour “Sarah Squirm: Live + in the Flesh.” Sarah Sherman is a champion of aggressively off-putting gross-out comedy, and this is her opus, an eye-popping (her orb literally pops out of its socket in one special effect) riot of dirty jokes committed to perversity and repulsion. It’s the only special that regularly cuts to audience members covering their eyes. It’s not for everyone, but for those of us who like to groan through laughs, it’s a delight.
Sherman tips her hand early with a cameo by the “Pink Flamingos” director John Waters, playing a stage manager in a headset who tells her, “Go out there and remind them why God invented the barf bag.”
She made him proud. Sherman (Squirm is her stage alter ego) is best known for her work on “Saturday Night Live,” where she has periodically smuggled in her gory, gooey aesthetic. But this is the pure, uncut version, with elaborate sound design, animation and a set that looks like something Pee-wee Herman would dream up after binge-watching the “Saw” movies.
In a caffeinated, rapid-fire delivery, Sherman makes jokes so graphic they could be called gynecological. But there’s refinement to the mess, honed from years of touring, and a love of comedy built into bits, which lightly mock myriad elements including crowd work, roasting, “Seinfeld,” political rants and hack raunchy stand-up. (“Why do they call it achieving orgasm? It’s not an achievement. You should be ashamed.”) Everything is performed with an ironic wink and a heightened sense of the absurd.
Sherman’s insight is that the essential overlap between body horror and gross-out humor is gratuitousness. Every moment is too much. The sexuality, the violence, the imagery, the tastelessness. Even her more ordinary jokes go on and on, long enough that that becomes the joke. It all works because she’s a Tasmanian devil of a performer whose momentum leads toward nonsense. There’s one surreal act-out where she combines cartoon lust with Shakespeare (“hubba hubba toil and trouble”), then throws in classic baseball patter with what might be called a performance of demonic masturbation. The applause break is entirely earned.
Whereas Sarah Sherman assaults viewers, Adam Pally pleads with them for approval, knowingly, uneasily, pathetically. In “An Intimate Evening With Adam Pally,” he tells jokes and sings songs, but mostly worries, expressing anxiety over pulling off the show, getting the rights to the music he needs and flashing his double chin. “Can we get a taller videographer?” he asks as an aside. His charming gem of a show is a musical stand-up special and behind-the-scenes artist documentary, but at its best, it’s a Christopher Guest-style spoof of both.
In between bits at the Bell House in Brooklyn, Pally calls his director to say he doesn’t want to make a standard special, and to ask repeatedly, self-seriously, about the point of it all. Onstage, he’s a parody of the confessional solo-show comedian. But there’s a lightness to the entire enterprise. Pally is a supremely relaxed performer, in song, but especially in spoofing himself falling apart. His performance somehow keeps us rooting for him. It’s even poignant when he malaprops, “I thought I was going to win an Emmy, like Bob Burnham.”
Pally and Sherman have made personal specials with unorthodox sensibilities. One gazes at his navel and the other looks deeper to see the guts underneath. The design and camera work look better than a vast majority of specials, which now are often found on YouTube. And it’s hard to imagine either one fitting easily on Netflix, which has put increased resources behind live events, roasts and podcast and social media stars.
If Paramount’s bid succeeds, a best-case scenario might be that it commits to artistically ambitious specials to rebuild the reputation of one of its own cable channels, Comedy Central. The worst case? How about Emmy-magnet John Oliver eased out of his job at HBO amid a cloud of political rumor in the way that late-night ratings leader Stephen Colbert was at CBS, a unit of Paramount?
Everything is speculation at this point, but consolidation of the entertainment landscape doesn’t help anyone except maybe a few executives; it certainly does not help emerging artists.
This provides an opening for smaller alternatives like the Dropout streaming service, a highly curated platform that has been intentional about committing to stylish, offbeat specials rather than emphasizing virality and scale. It has increased its stand-up output this year, ending with Aparna Nancherla’s slyly entertaining hour, “Hopeful Potato.”
On a set with an easy chair, books and a rug, the opening features low-key vibes as she says in a wry monotone: “I hesitate to start with a more vulnerable question, but is anyone else forgetting to slay lately?”
Then she cuts to a shot of herself in the audience cracking up. These two versions of herself, one performing, the other watching, meet at the end for a closing bit. In between, Nancherla discusses quitting stand-up just so she could make a comeback, not wanting children (“I guess for me it’s, you’ve got to end the franchise sometime”) and the low standards of “theater funny.”
Anyone who has heard Broadway audiences laughing at the mildest hint of a joke will appreciate this extended bit. Nancherla has a subtle stage presence, one that stands out in lineups of loudmouths and extroverts. But she’s sensitive to the nature of comedy, its different styles. That’s why she’s so sharp on the difference between “stand-up funny” and “theater funny.”
“Only thing close to theater funny is airplane funny,” she says, before giving an example of a joke from the pilot: “Sit right back and enjoy the flight to Peoria. And if you’re going to Paris, sorry you had to find out like this.”
This perceptive bit, which pokes fun at corny jokes, is rooted in the idea that when it comes to the success of comedy, context matters. It’s why adventurous artists need the right platform.
Jason Zinoman is a critic at large for the Culture section of The Times and writes a column about comedy.
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