I have tickets to see Joel McHale do stand up this weekend. Has anyone seen him lately? I’m a big fan of Community and I’ve found him very quick and funny on different podcasts and radio shows. I realized I haven’t seen too much of his stand up.
His “standup” bit during Community was hilarious, in a Steve Martin-ish way; he used the patterns of typical observational humor, about social groups (the Twos and Threes) that don’t really exist, and made it work.
I’m curious how it goes. I heard him on the radio quite a few years ago and he was talking about how he got into it. He was never a stand up comedian, but his agent showed him how much he could make doing it, so he came up with an hour of anecdotes and material.
Well he wasn’t great. Not bad but not great. I’ve see a lot of great comics and I wouldn’t put him up there. His set wasn’t tight. That’s ok some comics aren’t. Christopher Titus is on stage basically acting out a 60-90 minute script each night. It works for him. Bert Kreischer seems to be telling stories as they pop into his head. It works for him. McHale seemed a bit frantic and unsure. His stage persona was much different than his screen presence. There he is laid back and sarcastic. I think that would work better on stage. The better comics command the stage enough to allow for silence in between jokes. McHale seemed to act like he was going to lose the audience if he paused.
His opener was Steve Trevino who is a headliner in his own right. Purposefully done to have a very strong lead. Trevino was very good but not exactly original. Mostly wife and baby jokes.
Overall I would give the show a B. Enjoyable but slightly disappointing because I usually don’t put my money out unless it’s an A+ comic.
Thanks, pretty much what I figured.
I, for one, miss George Carlin. Do we need his comedy now more than ever?