In the third season of FXX’s surreal romantic comedy, Man Seeking Woman, show creator Simon Rich decided to settle down and explore the complexities of a long-term relationship. MSW protagonist Josh (Jay Baruchel) finally meets his match in Lucy (Katie Findlay) and together they grapple with fidelity, ranch dressing, meeting the parents, sex-addict forest creatures, […]
Continue ReadingLast fall, the day after the election, I went to Canada. These events are unrelated—the trip was pre-planned, but I got to experience a very surreal time in American history from the vantage point of another country. If you have the means by which to go on a mini-vacation while the country doesn’t know what […]
Continue ReadingAt the start of 2017, mulling over the awful year that was and pressed down by one disheartening news alert after the other, some people started to fear that there was one high-profile death in 2016 that they maybe forgot to account for: the death of comedy Twitter. At some point between the ridiculous joke […]
Continue Reading“You won’t mind if I ask to see some identification, I’m sure. It’s precinct policy.” The cheerfulness of the property clerk behind the window told me her shift had only recently started. And she was new to the squad on top of that. I could only see her head and upper torso, but that told […]
Continue ReadingIt might be a little jarring that the first voice you hear in Mike Birbiglia’s new Netflix special, Thank God For Jokes, isn’t Mike Birbiglia. Instead, a video recording of Jimmy Kimmel starts playing, addressing a crowd of celebrities that we can’t see. After the clip, Birbiglia walks out and officially opens the special. He […]
Continue ReadingSince Saturday Night Live’s last episode, a lot has happened – Oscar drama, Russia drama, Obama drama – so it was anyone’s guess how they’d address it all, in a season that seems to get more political each week. This episode was, thankfully, Trump-free, but that didn’t stop it from getting some major digs in, […]
Continue Reading‘Structurally Sound’ is a recurring feature where each week a different structurally unusual, rule-breaking anomaly of an episode from a comedy series is examined. “This is what happens when we battle for the butts. We don’t let girls come between us.” Somehow the very DIY brand of comedy that capitalizes on “buds being buds” that’s […]
Continue ReadingAshley Nicole Black is a writer and correspondent on Full Frontal with Samantha Bee. She dropped out of a PhD program at Northwestern University to study comedy at The Second City. Thank God it worked out. This week Black spoke to me about four of her favorite tweets, plus the Congressional Black Caucus, unpunished celebrity […]
Continue ReadingAshley Nicole Black is a writer and correspondent on Full Frontal with Samantha Bee. She dropped out of a PhD program at Northwestern University to study comedy at The Second City. Thank God it worked out. This week Black spoke to me about four of her favorite tweets, plus the Congressional Black Caucus, unpunished celebrity […]
Continue ReadingKurt Braunohler doesn’t want you to trust him and he explains why in his first ever Comedy Central one-hour special Trust Me, premiering tonight at midnight. For Braunohler, this hour is part of his current comedy goal: to make the laughs mean something. “I want to get to a place that’s not just silly haha, […]
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