Obviously, comic sensibilities change over time and each generation has its own new voices and comedians so some material won’t hold up.
But when you watch these specials you always have to bear in mind that the audience is filled with adoring fans who are primed to laugh at anything the comedian says. It’s the live equivalent of the laugh machine in sitcoms. So the laughs you hear are not necessarily earned.
I suspect a Millennial today would hear a Steve Martin album from the ‘70s and scratch his head. When Steve goes “Excuuuuuse Meeee” and the audience is in hysterics, the Millennial is probably saying, “What is so funny?”
So when I watch comedy specials I view them in two ways – how will this hold up, and is the material funny for this moment in time?
And that brings me to Amy Schumer. First off, I used to be a big fan of Amy Schumer. Loved her Comedy Central show, loved her stand up. But I found her last Netflix special to be painfully bad. Lazy, unfunny, jokes for shock value only. Almost like she was winging it.
So when I saw there was a new Amy Schumer Netflix special, "Growing," I was not all excited to watch it. But recently I had some time to kill and figured, what the hell? Maybe I’ll like her again. Maybe all the criticism she took for the last special registered and she really put together and polished A material for this go-round.
Nope.
Just more of the same weak material as the last special. “Okay, I almost just shit on myself.” “And if I did would I just kick it into the audience? Would you guys be cool with it?” Then there were vomit jokes, pregnancy jokes that Joan Rivers might have told in 1959, slut jokes, getting wasted jokes, husband jokes, etc. Very few genuine laughs although you’d never know it from the orgasmic audience.
When the Millennial says “What’s so funny about ‘excuuuuuse meeee?;” I can say Steve Martin had a unique persona and was really poking fun at comedians and he was riding the zeitgeist. At the time, he WAS funny. What do you say to someone twenty years from now about this Amy Schumer special? Well, she sort of had this slutty persona and at one time the act was very fresh.” “But the jokes are kind of on-the-nose, aren’t they? ‘The only time a man should drop to one knee is if he’s in the NFL or eating my pussy.” And what do you say to that? “Well, she used to be better. She used to have more spin on her jokes. She used to deal with subject matter rarely heard before. “
I do think if that same Millennial had seen her very first special she’d get it; she’d laugh along with everyone else.
I always wonder if I'm just out of touch (since I usually am), but I checked Rotten Tomatoes. Critics liked it but only 21% of the audience liked it. I guess in this case, I'm not alone.
Look, there are some comedians who, for my money, are just not funny. They’re annoying, their material sucks, their delivery sucks. They could get new writers, they could hone new material but it wouldn’t matter. But that’s not Amy Schumer. And when I watch other specials, like John Mullaney’s and see the care and effort that went into each and every joke, it pisses me off that Amy seems to half-ass it. She’s better than her recent special. It’s one thing to no longer be funny after twenty years; it’s another to no longer be funny after twenty months.
from By Ken Levine
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