6 Comedy Specials Worth Watching Over Memorial Day Weekend
New hours from Sarah Silverman, Mike Birbiglia, Jerrod Carmichael and others range widely in subject and style. But they all provide laugh-out-loud moments.Sarah Silverman, ‘PostMortem’(Stream it on Netflix)“Death is really hard for me,” Sarah Silverman says with the kind of impeccably performed earnestness that makes you believe her banal statement for just long enough to be sideswiped by the punchline. “And that’s what makes me unique.” What actually makes Silverman different is that few others would handle the death of a father and stepmother in the same month by joking merrily about merch. “I really feel like my parents would want me to monetize this,” she says.No amount of tragedy is going to turn Silverman into a maudlin solo artist. Her funniest jokes employ sarcasm, not sincerity. Despite its subject matter, this new hour is, in some ways, classic Silverman terrain, with raunchy bits and Hitler references. I wouldn’t even call it her most personal special. The closest she gets to philosophizing is a long chunk about the ignored life of the fly. Attention must be paid. She pays tribute to the memory of her parents through descriptions in loving detail.As those who saw her 2022 musical “The Bedwetter” know, her father clearly passed down a warmhearted, open-book sensibility. She ends with a scene from his last days, a beautiful (and gross) account of helping him pee. The most moving moment to me, though, was her consideration of the last words of her stepmother: “Your hair. It’s so dry.” Silverman looks grateful: “She always told me the truth.”Mike Birbiglia, ‘The Good Life’(Stream it on Netflix)Mike Birbiglia dislikes the friends of his 9-year-old daughter. Watching them, he quips, “makes me really not understand pedophilia.” That may not sound like a Birbiglia joke to you, but despite being a mostly clean, NPR- and Lincoln Center-approved comic, he has long been drawn to secrets, small transgressions and the humorous possibilities of being unlikable. He’s just not flamboyant about it.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More