Last Things First: 2022 Comedy MVPs with Jason Zinoman
Episode #418
It’s the end of 2022, which means it’s time once again for my annual year-end check-in with Jason Zinoman, critic at-large for The New York Times. Jason and I talk about the top trends we saw in comedy this year, the best up-and-comers in stand-up, the craziest ways comedy intersected with politics. And after all that, could we determine a Most Valuable Performer for the year? It’s our Comedy MVPs of 2022 episode.
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This transcript has been edited and condensed only slightly for your convenience.
Welcome to the 8th annual Comedy MVPs podcast. Joining me once again, the illustrious now Guild-worthy, Jason Zinoman, critic at-large for The New York Times. Welcome, Jason.
Great to be here, eight years. We're so old, Sean. We're grizzled veterans.
But are we as grizzled as the comedians we're about to talk about?
Some of them! You know, like a lot of critics, probably you. I don't want to assume, but I have mixed feelings about these year-end things. I've realized they have a real important purpose, because people pay attention to them and they read them. That matters. It gives exposure in a way that other things don't. So I always try to get a lot of young up-and-comers in here, because I feel like, what's the point? To the extent that you can't grade art, right? It's not sports, you know, but I think —
It's not sports?! We're announcing the MVP!
I know, I know. I hate to break the fourth wall and point out this ridiculous exercise for what it is, but it has been eight years. People can handle the truth. It's a charade. The whole thing's a charade.
I like that you did point out that you've learned to embrace it and make it your own because your Best Comedy of 2022 column in The New York Times (GIFT LINK!), is structured around as many different superlatives as you can conjure up, which does give space for people who otherwise wouldn't make a top 10 list, for example.
That's intentional. That's intentional. I was worried that they were going to make me do a top 10. I didn't do a Top 10, but I do feel like, to not be a coward, I try to do best special. Looking back at this year, what really stood out for you? If I was to say, ‘2022 comedy: What happened? Explain it to someone in the future, Sean.’ What would you say?
OK. Two things stuck out to me in terms of performance. The first is noticing just how much comedians loved having live audiences back. The number of specials that dealt with crowd work, or that dealt with — you could just see it on some of these comedians faces, their joy in being able to interact with a crowd. You know, the top special on most everybody's list this year was Jerrod Carmichael's Rothaniel. And that one — I don't know that it was even intentional, the call-and-response that comes with the audience, but then you saw that in a number of other specials that came out in the year. Or comedians, like Patton Oswalt, you wouldn't think of him as a crowd work guy but he devoted a solid 10-15 minutes for just dicking around with people in the front row. Obviously they were just so overjoyed to have people in front of them.
This is a fantastic point. And I don't think anyone's actually like put those together did that like this is because of the pandemic but I think you're right, it is. And it wasn't just Patton Oswalt. You have people who always did crowd work stuff, like
Right, like Sam Morril.
Andrew Schulz did a lot of crowd work. I went to see James Acaster, who is the critical darling for his last one. His show now, it's called (Hecklers Welcome). The premise of it was people can heckle him all they want. And he embraced it. I gotta be honest, I think you're right. I found looking back at what I wrote this year, I wrote a lot about audience and lack of audience — you know, Norm Macdonald, Bo Burnham, I wrote a piece on that. I wrote about Daniel Kitson, which talked about his trying to think about the audience in a more intimate, humane person-by-person way. You had, obviously, all the kind of people who are complaining about the cancel culture brigade, thinking about audience and hemming them in. I understand why yeah, I think people miss being in the room with other people. They realize that that's part of what's special about live comedy. I think reinventing the relationship is a great thing. That said, I'm a little ambivalent, we get a good sign that we're normalizing crowd work in stand-up specials. You and I are old enough to remember, I remember there was an episode of Louie in which he dramatized a debate among comedians about crowd work. And in the way that he often did that show, he gave the best argument to the side he didn't agree with, right? He was the anti-crowd work guy, but it was seen as kind of bold that he was giving the best argument to people who do crowd work well, right? And I think it's interesting to look at as a historical marker that like we've come so far that now, it doesn't seem so bold to stand up for crowd work. It's everywhere. It's on social media, constantly is crowd-work clips. People who don't understand, crowd work is a lot easier than it looks and it can be a bit of a cheap track. There's good and bad, but what do you think about it?
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I think you and I both noticed Kyle Kinane put out a clip this past week where he's like the algorithm is demanding I do crowd work but I hate crowd work. You said something else just now about another way that comedians are interacting with the audience that I also saw as a trend or a continuation of a trend, which is the notion that these famous wealthy comedians who are complaining about cancel culture, about the woke virus, the Elon Musk comedians of the world, as it were.
The MVP. The cheap MVP.
Actually, it's the new hack. Go back 30 some years to when Andy Kindler published the hack handbook of comedy. It was all about the fact that hack isn't just talking about airplane. Hack is about pandering to the audience because it's the cheapest kind of response or laughter you can get, and that's what this stuff is to me now. I don't know. You know, you and I are both Generation X. And it seems like a lot of these comedians that are falling into this trap are also Generation X. I don't know what that says about us as a demographic.
The Hack’s Handbook by Andy Kindler, circa 1991, in National Lampoon
Someone should bring back Kindler’s Hack Handbook or I don't know, if that's that exact thing. The thing that I think someone should do. They should have a site, and I don’t how to do it. But I think about this all the time. When things become hack. It's not like exact, but if you see enough comedy, you start and you see like the same premise enough you're like, OK, if I was someone who cared about being original, I wouldn't use that anymore, right? And it's different in 2022 than was in 2012, right? So for instance, by the way, let me just say another example I thought of was interactive specials, where they allowed the audience to choose where to go next. Another example of people playing with audiences.
But Elon Musk is I think, the comedy MVP, and a great example,
Wait, are you serious? Or sarcastic?
I am. I'm saying he's a great judge of what is hack. He's very interested in comedy. He steals a lot of jokes. And when he made that joke, ‘My pronouns are Prosecute/Fauci.’ Let's put aside the politics and look at the comedy. That was like, OK, like there's as good a sign as ever, as no one should ever make that premise ever again, and be taken seriously as a funny person.
The second one, a lot of these hack things in 2022 are about like trans issues, right? Like, I identify now as a gym sock or whatever. Any joke. Just forget about the politics for a second. I mean, it's just, I don't care. I know you live in New York. You think you're surrounded by liberals? Whatever. A million people have done that premise. And so when Sebastian Maniscalco, who until now, I was under the impression wanted to present himself as deserving a political comedian who appeals to everybody, builds this whole premise over a thing he invented. A thing he has said is not true.
He probably got it from listening to Joe Rogan's podcast.
He probably got it from there. But we don't know that, but we know that it's not true. We know he decided to make up a story about a kid who identified as a lion and ridiculed this fake thing. It’s just so telling. And it's particularly telling is, it’s not Joe Rogan doing it. It's the guy who I would have said would do whatever he could to not be involved in the polarizing culture wars. I do think it's interesting to look at, you’re right I would say that some of that cancel culture stuff was hack years ago, but I do think like some of the those specific examples of it like the trans jokes, the pronouns joke — those are as far as I'm concerned. Like, if I see or hear you doing that in a special, you're not serious about doing anything big.
I like the idea of a site that tells you when a joke has jumped the shark. And then you've already answered it yourself by saying it’s whenever Elon Musk has put it on Twitter, that’s it. The joke is done. The format is done. The joke is done.