John Mulaney – The Comeback Kid
John Mulaney looks like white bread and dresses like a comedian from the 1950s, but it’s a deceptive appearance. Because behind the generic white-straight-comedian appearance, there is a sharp anxious head with a language unique only to him, a voice that is just as shaky as a head that never stops doubting itself. When he harnesses all these qualities, he gets a brilliant and captivating special like this one. When he doesn’t, self-destruction ensues. So we much prefer this special, if only because of the great story about Clinton, and above all – how Mulaney knows how to tell it so well.
Neal Brennan – 3 Mics
Neil Brennan’s story in the industry is one of the strangest. He broke out as a friend of Dave Chappelle and the head writer of The Chappelle Show, and thus gained great love among African-American audiences, but he started his stand-up career at a rather late age. And he turned out to be a bitter and depressive stand-up comedian – a complete opposite of his friend Chappelle. When he got bored of that too, he decided to break standup formats, with the “3 Microphones” special managing to be very original, and also justifying the unique format. In the space between a personal show and a stand-up, Brennan managed to carve his own path, to be deep and waiting, but also to leave the dumb punches inside.
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Bo Burnam – Inside
We all went a little crazy during the corona virus. Some became conspirators, some learned to make sourdough (what happened to that in the end?), but only Bo Brahanem turned his freaking out into a revolutionary stand-up special. Opinions about the quality of this special are still divided, but it’s hard not to see the creativity, talent and brilliance of creating a stand-up special without an audience, alone at home during a global epidemic, and making it a work that manages to bring people together for one strange and funny digital moment. Maximum utilization of the situation.
Sarah Silverman – We Are Miracles
The simple truth is that we miss Sarah Silverman—who’s only released two shows in the past decade (but thankfully, is touring with a brand new show right now). Despite quite a few successful moments in the newer show, A Speck of Dust, the earlier show of the two, We are Miracles, established what later in the decade became a significant trend for successful comedians – to film their show not in a stadium or in a huge hall in order to show exactly how They manage, but on the contrary, to perform in front of several dozen people (Louis CK did it at Live at the Comedy Store, Aziz Ansari at Nightclub Comedian, Ray Romano at Just Here Around the Corner), return to their roots, not be required To the laughter of tens of thousands of people when you are confident enough in your ability to make the same amount of noise even from 40 or so lucky viewers. Silverman was the first in this trend and probably also the one who executed it the best.
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Patton Oswalt – Annihilation
If you watch the trailer that Netflix released for this 2017 special, you’d be mistaken to think that this is another comedian who is angry about Trump’s victory and stressed by the social upheavals. Anyone familiar with the hilarious Patton Oswald from before knew there were bound to be some brilliant geek jokes about Batman. But even those who followed Oswald’s life story, and knew that this special was recorded a year after his wife’s death from a video, could not have anticipated how painful, moving, funny, touching, heartbreaking and above all beautiful the second half of this special is.
Louis CK – Oh My God
Few, if any, stand-up artists have had the streak of classic shows that Louis CK had between 2007 (Shameless, with which he really broke out) and 2013’s Oh My God. Then he had a couple of less successful shows and what happened to him after that we all know. For many it conveyed the desire to see his stand-up, but the fact cannot be ignored that for almost a decade, CK ruled the comedy dome undisputedly. Oh My God is probably the best, smartest and most sophisticated of his shows, peaking with the classic “Of Course… But Maybe”, which demonstrates his convoluted thinking and attention to language at their best.
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Maria Bamford – The Special Special Special
Everyone can tell cringe jokes, sure, it’s not great wisdom, and for the last decade that’s exactly what most comedians have done. But the most embarrassing corners of your life must be opened in a controlled and planned way on stage, and you must do what Maria Bamford did, which is literally to open the most intimate corner of her life to the viewers. She recorded her The Special Special Special in front of only two viewers – her parents, in their living room. In other words, she created for herself in a controlled and planned manner the conditions for a filmed performance that most stand-up artists do not dare to imagine even in their nightmares: this is his performance, only two people came and these are your parents.
Michelle Wolf – Nice Lady
Daily Show alum Michelle Wolf’s mega-viral appearance at the 2018 White House Press Room Gala Dinner—an event that’s usually a roast of the sitting president in the presence of the sitting president, but of course Donald Trump didn’t show up—turned her into a comedian for a few weeks The most talked about politician in the United States, and launched her into her own satirical-political Light Night on Netflix (which didn’t last long). But Wolff is at her best precisely when she talks – yes, this is her real voice, as she emphasizes at every opportunity – about personal things. The most personal. Yes, she talks a lot about genitalia here, and it’s so much funnier – and it seems so much more interesting and funny to her – than the previous, current or next president.
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Anthony Jeselnik – Thoughts & Prayers
Anthony Jeselnik is the endpoint of two old comedic traditions: the one-liners, and black humor. In his characteristic deadpan style, the tall, somewhat robotic blond drops punch after punch designed to compulsively shock a 3-year-old who says “poop” to the kindergarten teacher. Sometimes it can get on your nerves, and there’s no doubt that Jeselnik can sometimes be exhausting – but this special manages to precisely walk the line between defiant and funny. Beyond that, his transition to longer beats definitely breaks the formula, and manages to consolidate his most successful show, as evidenced by the segment that gave the name to the special.
Norm McDonald – Hitler’s Dog, Gossip & Trickery
The greatest loss of the stand-up world in the last decade was undoubtedly the death of Norm Macdonald, only 61 years old, from the leukemia he had suffered on and off since 2013. He recorded his farewell show, Nothing Special, alone at home, in front of a microphone, shortly before entering hospital for the first time The latter – even though it was unfinished, so that there would be a record of the materials if he did not return. But to see McDonald in all his glory as a comedian, you have to go to the full show he recorded on Netflix a few years earlier, doing what he knows how to do best: standing in front of an audience and telling jokes. And that was the beauty of McDonald’s: these were not stories, not insights, not philosophical speeches. I mean, there was more philosophy in his jokes than in ten other shows – but these were always jokes first.
Chelsea Peretti – One of the Greats
Chances are, you know Chelsea Peretti from her huge role in “Brooklyn 99” (when she left the series, everything else went downhill as well), but here she goes back to her roots: stand-up-come-improv while constantly playing with the format. She’s very funny even when she’s just telling the jokes, but when the camera starts cutting to the laughing audience… that’s exactly where the real surprises of this excellent hour begin to happen.
Gary Gulman – The Great Depresh
Gary Golman’s beautiful, laugh-out-loud and heart-wrenching show tells the entire story of his life while stopping at key stations in the development of the clinical depression he suffered from since childhood. If you haven’t seen it, there’s a chance you’re rolling your eyes right now: Okay, another depressed clown? Anyone else not quite sure how to be funny so they do a sad stand-up? Of course not. It’s also a stand-up show, about his Jewish mother, about his attempt to become a professional baseball player in his youth, about millennials, what not. The tears are just a bonus.
Nick Kroll & John Mulaney – Oh Hello
It’s not exactly stand-up, except in the sense that it’s terribly funny and it happens on a stage in front of an audience. This is not a comedy show, because there is no plot and not exactly characters (but there are personas), although Nick Carroll and John Mulaney appear here disguised as two grumpy old New Yorkers. It’s not improvised, but sometimes it seems to be a bit like that. It’s an hour and a half sketch that never gets boring for a second. It’s simply “Oh, Hello!”: a parody of theater and people who love theater, a celebration of an exaggerated New York accent, lots of jokes about Jews and a shocking amount of tuna salad.
Bill Burr – Live at Red Rocks
What else can be said about Bill Bear, the man who in this decade made an incredible transformation from a very funny, very angry and very politically incorrect comedian to a unique, different, personal, exciting voice – and still, the funniest, angriest and most offensive? At Live at Red Rocks, Bar completes the move that began in the previous show Paper Tiger (with whom he also performed in Israel): without giving up a millimeter of his provocative persona, without stopping to laugh at everyone (yes, definitely also at feminists), Bar’s stand-up seems to have been renovated There they broke a wall and behind it another whole house was discovered. He still manages to perfectly play the most opaque man but also reveal how sensitive he is (something everyone suspected, but he had no official proof) and also talk more openly than ever about the roots of his anger. A perfect show.
Dave Chapelle – Sticks & Stones
Despite the increasing backlash against Dave Chappelle in recent years, it is hard to deny the fact that he is the biggest, most influential and important comedian of the current era. And all in all, anyone who doesn’t agree that he is also a genius, a philosopher and one of the funniest people on earth, is just a hater. Whether you like what he has to say or think he’s a dark misogynistic homophobe, you should really listen to him. All his shows since the comeback are worth watching – some are more adventurous, some even feel like a good story without a real punchline – this special (translated on Netflix as “laughing with you”) is his most cohesive and uniform, with brilliant moments that draw from Carlin’s language juggling , the pushing of the social boundaries of Fryer, the smile of Eddie Murphy and the analytical ability of Seinfeld. This is also the special that manages to consolidate its agenda into one sentence, which comes after a particularly defiant punch: “Remember – you are the ones who clicked on my face.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Ywxhi_g_S4
Fortune Feimster – Sweet & Salty
One of the freshest new voices in American stand-up, Fortune Feimster (what a fun name to say. The name of a character in the eighties sitcom about a cheeky but kind-hearted girl) tells stories about a world that feels terribly far away for the average Israeli listener – especially about her childhood and youth in the US South B, and of course she has the right accent – but makes them feel close, familiar and local. Please note that this show for some reason opens with ten rather weak minutes that almost make you want to give up on it, and then suddenly jumps up and becomes a celebration of laughs. A little patience and you’re there.
Bret Kreisner – The Machine
Brett Kreischer is a human wrecking ball. A chunky, rough, loud thing with an aging prat-boy look and mentality to match. It’s just that some unclear miracle happened to him – maybe a lightning strike, maybe a gypsy curse – and this college boy seemed to grow aware in an instant. This self-awareness is the driving force behind this special, and between some pretty brilliant diagnoses about party culture and of course plenty of self-humor about how dumb he is, you find out while you’re pretty much rooting for this jerk. Then comes the story that gave the special, and Kreischer himself, the name “The Machine”, and it’s really one of the funniest stand-up stories you’ll ever hear.
Tig Notaro – Happy to Be Here
Tig Nutro’s career got a boost thanks to a legendary set she recorded the day after she found out she had breast cancer. This show was excellent, but it was a bit misleading as to what’s funny about Tig Nutro in general – because most of her humor isn’t personal at all. It’s a bit of a slow show, Nutro’s delivery is intentionally dry, and she’s very fond of patterns and repetitions. She really likes patterns and repetitions. It’s impossible to really explain what’s meant without spoilers for the show’s epic finale, which begins like a preparation for a standard finale, immediately takes a left turn, plays with the audience’s expectations and patience and ends with… in short, she really likes patterns and repetitions.