The Standups

The Standups is a recent Netflix original that has been increasingly popular; so much so that it’s recently garnered a second season. It is a spin on the classic hour-long comedy special that seems to be commonplace on Netflix. In this series, different comedians perform their 30-minute sets back to back and they’re filmed as separate episodes of each series. Often these people are lesser-known comics just starting out in the comedy world, but in the first season, they started with a bang: Nate Bargatze.

Nate Bargatze has been performing stand-up comedy for a long time and he is another one of my personal favorite comedians. In this series, he’s only given 30 minutes of time to showcase his style and skill, which is plenty of time for him.

Bargatze’s candor and seemingly apathetic delivery make his style of comedy unique. He comes off as a southern bumpkin to some and rides on that with the stories he tells about his life. He’s similar to the past comedian I wrote about, Mike Birbiglia, in that their sets mostly revolve around actual events that have happened to them.

In this series, Nate Bargatze tells about his experiences at Walmart, his pointless fights with his wife, and an unforgettable trip to North Carolina. He is a regular, middle-class American just like his audience, and his relatability is a big emphasis of his comedy.

Another great comic in the first season of this series is Beth Stelling. She’s a midwesterner who has an interesting perspective in this world filled with rules about everything. Her first jokes about airport security set up the rest of her set to be as vulgar, but the rest is pretty mild in comparison. It’s as if Stelling tests the audience to see if they can handle her personality before they invest in the rest of her jokes.

And if you do decide to invest, you’re in for a treat! Beth Stelling is one of the few comedians from this series that I’ve taken the time out to look into further. She doesn’t disappoint outside of the Netflix original either.

Her comedy is new and refreshing. Even if the topic is something that you’ve heard before, she tackles it in a different way, which is a nice break from the monotony of common old comedians.

Now, I say that Beth Stelling is one of the only comedians I’ve bothered to look up further, and that’s because I feel that the others have lacked majorly in some way. I think that two comedians in the first season have the exact same problem with their material.

Fortune Feimster and Dan Soder are two more comedians in this 6-comedian series. Dan has been a commenter on Guy Code and Girl Code on MTV and I think his commentary has been humorous for a while. Fortune Feimster, however, I have never heard of before. Regardless of my knowledge, I think they both made the mistake of putting and keeping their comedy in a small box.

Dan Soder is a self-titled pothead. He talks about it or rather doesn’t stop talking about it, throughout his 30-minute set. It seems as though there isn’t much more to Soder besides; 1. He is male and 2. He smokes weed.

This makes his comedy hard to relate to for people like myself who aren’t a part of either of the aforementioned groups. That’s not to say that it’s completely unfunny, it’s just hard to be a part of the joke when you can’t say, “Oh yeah, I’ve been in a situation like that,” or “That is absurd.”

Because these two types of comedy seem to hit the mark the most with audiences. And as for Soder, even when he hits the first point, it’s not really a full joke, just the observation part of it, and it certainly doesn’t leave a spectator with a sore gut.

Fortune Feimster seems to struggle similarly with her comedy. If she wasn’t talking about the fact that she is lesbian in her set, then she was talking about her weight; and if she wasn’t doing the latter, she was doing the former. And that’s not to say that it’s a problem to talk about either of these things in your comedy. Tig Notaro and Jim Gaffigan talk about these respective topics in their own stand-up specials and they do so in a way that makes the audience join in on the comedy.

This is where Feimster’s comedy falls short. It’s the same exclusionary effect that Soder’s comedy has; you don’t get it and even when you do, the joke isn’t finished. It certainly leaves more to be desired in a comedy set.

All in all, The Standups was a fantastic idea for a series, and the seasons just seem to be getting better. And who knows, maybe you’ll have the complete opposite reaction to these comedians as I did. What do I know?

Watch The Standups on Netflix here:

The Standups Netflix Original