marcusharwell.net

I can’t tell if his new show will last more than a season, but it was good enough to bring me back for another week. It wasn’t Chappelle’s Show brilliant, but it was pretty good.

I get the sense that Martin is a real person, by which I mean that he seems like he’s being himself, a down-to-earth guy who happens to be very funny. So many actors and comics only play a character in public. I love moments when it seems to me I can see a real person, like Christian Bale’s meltdown on audio that’s currently burning up the tubes of the internets, or this behind-the-scenes clip from Demetri Martin’s show.

I want to like the show, because I so adore Martin’s standup. He’s an original and insightful comic. His standup segments from the show, however, annoyed me more than they made me laugh. The audience guffawed at every statement, whether there was a joke or not. It was almost like having a laugh track. Martin undoubtedly has a team of writers to pad out the amount of material he has to produce to have a series, and I don’t begrudge that. But it doesn’t capture the magic of his comedy specials. The sketches are suprisingly funny, and those will keep me watching for a while. It’s not perfect, but Martin could well grow into the half hour format if he’s given enough of a chance.

And just to be clear, I don’t think Bale’s “true self” is the screaming asshole on his audio clip. He may be that more or less, I don’t care. I will say it’s taken out of context from the set of a big budget film and there’s more than a little pressure on the actors to put some life into the 4th movie of a tired franchise. Bale may be justified or not, I can’t know. But it’s not a persona he put on for the public, it’s his raw anger and it’s something we all have the potential to match. It’s real.