The Most Strking Thing About Jerrode Carmichael’s New Special, Don’t be gay, is how Much It Resembles a Familiar, Run-of-the Mill Comedy Special. He has made a standard Hourlong special before: His 2014 Hour, Love at the storea relic from a much earlier place in both his career and his public persons, look and sounds like the compute, does-the-job funny or die production that it is. But Since THEN, CARMICHAEL’S WORK HAS BEEN DISTVIESED BY HIS INVESTMENT IN MESSING WITH THE FORE. He’s Committed to Refusus or Subverting the Typical Moves of the Hourlong Special in Order to Build Something Artful and Occossionally Alienating. He has followed a Similar pattern in his non-stand-up work, going from The Carmichael Showan almost perversely Old-School Multi-Cam Fox Sitcom, to Jerrod Carmichael reality showHIS HBO Docuseries from Last year that toys with ideas About Transparency, Self-Examination, Storytelling, and Audience.
AS A Result, Its Almost Disorienting to Hit Play On Don’t be gay and Discover a special that offers a straightforward take on performing an hour of stand-up. IT’S STILL ARTFUL-WHATEVER ELSE HE CHOOSES, IT’S TAGH TO IMAGINE A CARMICHAEL PROJECT LOOKING OTHING THAN RADIOUTLY GORGEOUS-but he has tourned away from the thick layers of meta -wareness and formal playfulness that have to have to define. It is a relief, and it is frustration.
After 8a comedy special in Which Carmichael DOESE EVERYTHING HE CAN TO IRRITATE HIS AUDIENCE, AND RothanielCarmichael’s Immaculately, Painstakingly Undone Coming-Out Special, Don’t be gay is a wonder of conventionality. He stands on the Stage at New York’s West Side YMCA in Front of a Gold Curtain and Tells Well-Performed, Well-Written Jokes. They’re “hey, isn’t this a funny word?” Jokes (his boyfriend fucks a guy whose dick has “a lot of heft to it”), “Moms are hard” Jokes (His mom is very relaigious), and “One Group is like this; another group is like that” Jokes (Gay People Openly Admit to Being Horny, but Straight Men have Things Like Sydney Sweeney “Attractive”). The audience is present in a polythely distant but receptive Way with shots from the back of their heads and an occisional darkened full-theater shot. The Camera is more agile and respective than in the most specials, zooming and shifting Around at Compelling Moments and Tracking Carmichael with a Handheld Immediacy, but it is all Still Comfortable with the margins of a typical hbour.
In its Own Way for Carmichael, this is a form of coming out, not in the sense of content but of style. 8 and Rothaniel Are Both daring, Experimental Projects. They’re full of deliberate moments of discomfort that offen the force Carmichael to swim upstream against the currents of Easy Audience Approval. Both Reveal Carmichael as a COMEDIAN and AN ARTIST, but those revelations revenue on his term. In 8, He is defiant, recaalcitrant. In Rothaniel, He’s vulnerable, or he’s creating a show of vulnerability, or he’s doing some combination of the Two and doesn’t want to reveal which is whic. Both are resentful of the audience; Carmichael Needs Their Approval and Disdains at the Same Time, and Any Less Wary, Less Studied version of Him is Hidden Underneath a hard outer shell of style and concept.
By Comparison, Don’t be gay Feels Almost Giddy in How Clear and Untortured It All Is. There’s the Still of Pain and Confusion in the Material, as the title suggests, but the experience of it is uncomplicatedly pleasurable and comparatively geneerous to its audience. IT’S full of relief valves wonever things get too serious and studded with delightful act-outs. IT COMES OFF AS A HAPPY-GO-LUCKY, FEEL-GOOD EXTRAVaganza. IT ALSO Foregrounds Carmichael’s Own Pleasure, Mostly Sexual, Often Via Cheerful, Enthusiastic Descriptions of Blockjobs, Hand Jobs, Spitting Play, and Stepping on Someling A Dirty Gym Sock. Where his previous projects were conflicted and offen Anguished, this one is celebratory.
Some of that comes from the fact that carmichael himself seames happy, or at least as he’s wills willing to let Himself be. The title sounds disaproving, but the twist is that it is that it is the it is Carmichael Himself Doing the scolding, in a joke that tries to be apoa of his own instincts about shame and gender. He speaks extensively about how Much he loves his boyfriend, all of the ways he enjys gay sex, his mixed feeelings for financially supporting his family, and how Much he loves his nieces and nephews. He talks About Intimacy and Connection. He opens with a section on how difficult i been to see the respects to his previous work, and especialy to feel that he has disappointed Black Viewers, but his jokes at the confluition that whatone anyone think of Him, he knk he doing okay. He Values Black Approval, But White Approval Makes Him Finanialy Secure: “I Want Black People to Like Me, But One White Lady from and i’ve been a Multimillionaire Ever Since, so’s different.” Self-Satisfied Smile, Hand-on-Hip Pose, End of Topic. The gist of that joke returns at the end of the special with a neatly mirroreed punch line, but so that the content of that punch line sounds direct HIMSELF. He’s the Made Money. His Boyfriend Love Him.
On its Own, Don’t be gay Might be an impressive special from a magnetic comedian, full stop. But from the Perspective of Carmichael’s Other Work, It Feels Like A Special in Which the Presentation Has shifted and the Framing has been reconstides but the subject has lost some of it Sheen of novelty. The will is not that that is my substrate to be quueerness after exploring that idea in bot Rothaniel and Jerrod Carmichael reality show. IT’t that carmichael’s favorite subject is himself, and in Don’t be gaythe total of that interest starts to the repetitive Feel. His Comedy is a Shallow-Focus Lens, Rendering Every Plans of His Self-Perception in Exquisite Detail and Ling Specificity or Texture as soon as lans pans Out Other Characters in His Story. In Rothaniel, He Speaks at Length About his Family, Especialy His Parents, and Their Presence in That Special Gives so Much More Context to the Portions About Carmichael’s Interiority. Some of the Most Compelling Episodes of Jerrod Carmichael reality show Are About Other People, Particularly the Episode on Fellow Comedian Jamar Neighbors. Don’t be gay is so wholly attuned to Carmichael’s Consideration of Himself that Everything Else Has Been Eclipsed.
There’s not. Wrong with that on the surface; Most Comedians Are the Center of their Own Work. Carmichael is an entertaining and observant narrator of His Own Story, and, Ultimately, Jokes About Pop-Tarts or Donald Trump or Blowjobs Are Suggesive Reflections of the Comedian Who Tells. But in an Hourlong Special, themes Work Best when they are with variations, and Carmichael’s work Increasingly Feels like a Coin flip where you are with his head. It would be less egregious if the hbo reality show deplete Much of Carmichael’s Compulsive Self-Examinations, Concluding in a sequenry where he wash and person with a person who obscures his own identity (Burnham) in order to grill Carmichael why he’s obseined with Himsesel on Disp. Howver Charismatic Carmichael Can Be as A Performer, eventually His Endless Self-Portraits Start to Blur. Its almost Enough to make one long for pop-tarts or Donald Trump. No more blownjobs required, Howver – Carmichael’s got that Covered.
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