Just saw this and ummmm…I think she may have been going for something meta but basically it was kind of a train wreck. There were definitely some funny jokes but she floundered in the middle of the special and literally ran off stage (I don’t think that part was completely fake) and had a kid form the audience come up on stage and up stage her (definitely a planned bit) and then build up to a finale that was just her doing a jig while the audience filed out. One of the strangest things I have ever seen.
I know some of it was planned but the fact that Comedy Central buried it on a Monday night with no repeats and the version On Demand is only 22 minutes while the special was 40 tells me it didn’t work.
I haven’t seen the special yet but this article makes the case that the whole thing was staged. I’d heard her on a Comedy Bang Bang podcast talking about a special she had recently taped at the Fillmore that went horribly and was going to be abandoned— if the article is correct, I guess that was part of the act too.
Or maybe she actually bombed and they’re trying to rebrand it as performance art. Guess I need to watch it for myself.
I’ve seen her in person a couple of times, once as a guest on a live Comedy Death-Ray (now Comedy Bang Bang) recording in Chicago and once as part of a stand-up show at the Just for Laughs festival. These events were a year or two apart and I discovered that the bits/jokes she’d been telling on the podcast, which seemed fairly natural and organic, were actually just part of her stand-up act. Comedian Natasha Leggero does the same thing, just rehashing bits from her act when she’s on podcasts.
The kid coming on stage was a bit and the back stage stuff (that as probably filmed after the fact) was clearly a bit but the floundering on stage and running off seemed really real to me. It’s possible I am wrong but even if you assume it was all a bit, it didn’t work.
Apparently they filmed the set twice that night…and it played out the same both times. It was staged and in my opinion that makes it incredibly lame. Especially with all the Kaufman talk.
I loved her as Mel, but I thought her character on 30 Rock was kinda flat also. I kept imagining what a different actress could have done with those meaty lines.
I wasn’t aware that she was on that show, as I quit watching it several years ago when it became the same formula for each episode, a la The Office. I can’t imagine having to watch both her AND Tracy Morgan in the same series. Chalk and blackboard.
See, I felt exactly the opposite. I loved her Daily Show bits; she was one of my favorites. But I’ve loathed her in the other things I’ve seen her in, including Flight of the Conchords (which, to be fair, I hated everyone in).
I liked it, and I didn’t think any of the meltdown stuff was legit. She sold the arrplane/water thing pretty well at the beginning, but if any of that had really happened, it never would have been broadcast. Andy Kaufman’s name did come to mind at some point during the special, but it felt more like Mr. Show to me. And I say that as a compliment because I’ve never been a Kaufman fan and I think Mr. Show was great. It’s sort of hard to pinpoint the difference I’d say Mr. Show was more focused on at least entertaining your or making you laugh, and a lot of the time Kaufman was just amusing himself. There were bits of the special where I laughed pretty hard and bits where I didn’t, which is kind of the same as her hit ratio on the Daily Show or as Hazel. But she’s unsettling enough and funny enough that I’m interested enough to keep watching even when I’m not laughing that hard.
I can concede it was entirely for show (most of it clearly was; I am still not convinced the fumbling was) but even on that level it didn’t work, I don’t think. Uncomfortable can be funny; this was just uncomfortable.
