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| | FOR SUBSCRIBERS | MAY 28, 2024 | |
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Watch this absurd comedy special
This comedy special was reviewed by the NYT below. I clicked on the YouTube link below, to watch. It started out really stupid, but became hysterically absurd as it went on. If you have an hour to kill, this is pretty funny. And, it actually looks at AI in ways that I never considered.
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| Conner O'Malley in “Stand Up Solutions,” his newest comedy special. Conner O'Malley, via YouTube |
Dear Watchers,
For fans of the comedian Conner O’Malley, new material is always a surprise. Not in the sense that it always drops out of the blue — though sometimes it does — but because you never know whom he is going to be next.
In his latest creation, a comedy special called “Stand Up Solutions” on YouTube, he is Richard Eagleton, a father and University of Wisconsin graduate from Des Plaines, Ill., who majored in electrical engineering and minored in Dr Pepper sciences. Richard has come to his audience with a pitch: He has built an A.I. comic named “KENN” to perfect the art of joke-telling, giving his bot a neural network of influences that range from Bill Maher to Charlie Chaplin to a man wearing a barrel instead of clothes.
Richard Eagleton is a perfect encapsulation of why O’Malley, a former writer for “Joe Pera Talks With You” and “How to With John Wilson,” has amassed a cult following. His portrayals of men on the verge of a nervous breakdown tap into a desperate form of male insecurity: These are guys who think of themselves as innovators but are really just fools. On the surface, they can look wholesome with their belted high-waisted khakis and their love of the Toyota RAV4, but don’t be fooled. They are carrying deep wells of mania.
The pretense of “Stand Up Solutions,” based on a theater show O’Malley toured with last year, is that Richard is giving a “keynote address and fund-raising event,” and O’Malley arrives in a baseball cap and polo shirt emblazoned with the logo for his fake company. As he goes through his presentation, the screen behind him piles on more jokes, including footage of O’Malley ape-walking on all fours on a treadmill in a demonstration of Richard’s workout routine. (It’s as impressive as it is funny.) The visuals look cheap — the graphics are so rudimentary they are almost artful.
Much of what O’Malley does is pure absurdity, but look beyond the screaming and you can see the careful orchestration of Richard’s emotional breakdown. It occurs over the course of the hourlong special, and its trigger is stand-up comedy itself. Richard is both inspired and maddened by hacky stand-ups, and he has turned to artificial intelligence to solve his problems. With this incredibly specific portrayal, O’Malley touches on the universal, creating a memorable portrait of a man grasping for relevance in a world he doesn’t fully understand.
Also this week
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| Benedict Cumberbatch, left, and Ivan Howe in “Eric.” Netflix |
- “Camden,” a documentary series by Asif Kapadia (“Amy”) about the London neighborhood of the title and the music that originated on its streets, arrives Wednesday, on Hulu.
- “Eric,” a limited series set in 1980s New York starring Benedict Cumberbatch, arrives Thursday, on Netflix. Cumberbatch plays a puppeteer whose child goes missing.
- The long-awaited second season of “We Are Lady Parts,” about a Muslim punk band, arrives Thursday, on Peacock.
- “Pyramid Game,” a South Korean thriller set at a girls’ school, also lands on Thursday, on Paramount+.
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