Sarah Silverman, ‘PostMortem’
“Death is really hard for me,” Sarah Silverman says with the kind of impeccably performed earnestness that makes you believe her banal statement for just long enough to be sideswiped by the punchline. “And that’s what makes me unique.” What actually makes Silverman different is that few others would handle the death of a father and stepmother in the same month by joking merrily about merch. “I really feel like my parents would want me to monetize this,” she says.
No amount of tragedy is going to turn Silverman into a maudlin solo artist. Her funniest jokes employ sarcasm, not sincerity. Despite its subject matter, this new hour is, in some ways, classic Silverman terrain, with raunchy bits and Hitler references. I wouldn’t even call it her most personal special. The closest she gets to philosophizing is a long chunk about the ignored life of the fly. Attention must be paid. She pays tribute to the memory of her parents through descriptions in loving detail.
As those who saw her 2022 musical “The Bedwetter” know, her father clearly passed down a warmhearted, open-book sensibility. She ends with a scene from his last days, a beautiful (and gross) account of helping him pee. The most moving moment to me, though, was her consideration of the last words of her stepmother: “Your hair. It’s so dry.” Silverman looks grateful: “She always told me the truth.”
Mike Birbiglia, ‘The Good Life’
Mike Birbiglia dislikes the friends of his 9-year-old daughter. Watching them, he quips, “makes me really not understand pedophilia.” That may not sound like a Birbiglia joke to you, but despite being a mostly clean, NPR- and Lincoln Center-approved comic, he has long been drawn to secrets, small transgressions and the humorous possibilities of being unlikable. He’s just not flamboyant about it.
Birbiglia’s reputation doesn’t always match up to his peculiar talents. For instance, he’s well known for mainstreaming intricate narratives in American stand-up, but his shows are as dense with punchlines as any club comic’s. He’s also pricklier than he seems. When he wades into taboo, however, there tends to be a purpose. His pedophilia joke tells us he’s not always a sweetheart of a dad.
This masterly new show is about life in the sandwich generation, trying to answer questions from your daughter (What is the good life? Who is Jesus?) while caring for a father after a stroke. While Silverman’s dad clearly enjoyed her style of jokes, that’s not the case here. Birbiglia presents his father as remote, stoic, and unhappy with crude or personal comedy. They are opposites in child-raising styles, too. His father was often absent and seemed to know everything. Birbiglia and his wife have the hallmarks of Brooklyn helicopter parents. Summing up their practical knowledge, Birbiglia does some math: “She’s a poet. I’m a comedian. Together, we’re a sculptor.”
The climax involves a fight with his father over a political joke Birbiglia told. This is the moment when I wished Birbiglia had spilled more secrets, like sharing the actual gag. His strength, a refined structure, can become a weakness, making his work schematic, but more than in the past, he injects mess and mystery here. Parts don’t get neatly tied up. The argument ends brusquely and also without clear resolution. The show is about coming to grips with this charged meeting, a reframing of it. It leaves us with the knowledge that we never really understand our parents. And why would we? We were all absent during their formative years.
Emily Wilson, ‘Fixed’
(Stream it on YouTube or TikTok)
At 15, Emily Wilson appeared on “The X Factor,” a reality television music competition whose judges included Simon Cowell and Nicole Scherzinger. It did not go well. Over a decade later, in a tightly edited, self-demolishing multimedia performance, she puts all her humiliations onstage, reflecting on and transforming them into deadpan jokes, hustling dances and peppy songs. It’s a hoot, albeit one with dark undertones about our current exhibitionist culture.
There’s a touch of Bo Burnham in her deadpan songs, but the self-portrait is most perceptive on the specific world of kid singing groups. Why must their names all use puns? Her double act is AusEm, because her name is Emily and her partner’s is Austin. Wilson is particularly funny capturing the cringey desperation of a child star. She handles her youthful ambition with light mockery, the biggest laughs coming from delusions and rationalizations. “Look you guys,” she tells the audience, “there’s people who tell the truth. And then there’s winners.”
Jerrod Carmichael, ‘Don’t Be Gay’
Can Jerrod Carmichael go back to basics? That’s what he seems to be trying to do in this new effort, a return to cynical, punchy jokes that introduce themselves with a dash of shock (see the title). Before he came out of the closet in a moody, sit-down performance in “Rothaniel,” then made his own navel-gazing reality show, Carmichael was a gifted club comic. His new hour has more laughs per minute than his recent work, and his attention-getting premises, among them children’s funerals, aren’t as sad as you might think.
But conventional stand-up alternates now with confessional long thoughts, about the details of being in an open relationship or the cultural meaning of D’Angelo. There’s more comedy in the former, and more freshness in the latter; still, he hasn’t entirely figured out how to fuse them. Often, he’ll have a take about his life that he shoehorns into a broad premise that applies to everyone.
But Carmichael’s different. Pushing his leather coat over his shoulders, he carries himself with the swagger and self-regard of a pop star between songs. “Have you ever been the smartest person in the room?” he asks. “That’s me in church.”
Notably, his work doesn’t just avoid topicality. It exists apart from a changing social and political climate. And that also raises questions. Carmichael begins and ends his set with bits likening racism to homophobia, but what really seems to be on his mind is class. He jokes about how giving money to his family is turning him into a “Reagan-era Republican.” We’re in a different era now. It would be interesting to hear what he has to say about it.
Greg Warren, ‘The Champ’
Did you know fishing is a sport? Imagine the cheerleaders. That’s all it takes for a solid premise. Greg Warren gets this. His appealing, all-American observational humor begins with such sound, simple ideas, executed with commitment. Produced by Nate Bargatze, who shares his family-friendly, slice-of-life style, Warren takes on a big, bland subject like poison ivy or Walgreens, then sits with it, attacking from a dizzying number of angles. He likes to exaggerate and play dumb. Don’t expect him to know what a stucco house is. “Sounds like a clown who can’t get out of stuff,” he jokes. His breakout special, “The Salesman,” leaned on his years working at Procter & Gamble to do a stickily memorable riff on peanut butter. This time, after telling stories about his losses as a college wrestler, he captures the texture of university athletics in all its absurdity. Even when he’s doing an elaborate cheer for angling, you get the sense that he’s joking about something he knows deeply.
Comedian CP, ‘Sunday After Six’
Charisma goes a long way. A little can make decent jokes into great ones. A lot makes a taped special feel live. I had that feeling watching the new hour from Christopher Powell, known as Comedian CP, an actor and stand-up who has appeared on “Detroiters” and “Empire.” His bits take on familiar subjects (flirting post-#MeToo, white people vs. Black people), but he handles them with such riotous gusto, you’ll be happy to revisit them. His description of making up a more hood persona for his white girlfriend, then running into trouble when he brings her home to his Black family is very funny. He is an exciting presence when animated, but also comfortable holding the stage in silence. His go-to move is taking a stand, then asking if he would believe the same thing in a hostage situation with his life on the line. You can guess what happens, but you’ll crack up just the same.
Jason Zinoman is a critic at large for the Culture section of The Times and writes a column about comedy.
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