On Completely Normal, Tom Segura is just like every regular dude you've met in your day-to-day life, but way funnier. The everyday affability Segura carries himself with allows him to jump between the silly and "blue," between quick jokes and bigger stories with aplomb. The result sees a seasoned veteran at work, a set of skills honed to assassin-like levels over years of developing a voice.
Segura is such a pro that, as he jumps into talking about race, he never comes across as crossing a line into offense. It's an incredibly tricky thing for even the best white comedians to do but even as he's screaming in his best "aggressive black guy voice" — an amazing bit that ends in him yelling at hip-hop legend Big Daddy Kane — Segura never veers away from funny. And when he calls out the audience for being "weird and white" upon their nervous laugh, ol' Tommy Buns reveals an incredibly keen eye and willingness to call people out on their own hypocrisies.
The startling honesty Segura utilizes in examining his own flaws allows him to turn the mirror on the audience and force them to face their own feelings. When Segura says, "It's okay for me to make jokes about disabled people and people with horrible diseases because they make me uncomfortable and I don't want to be like them," the laugh that comes from the audience a fidgety one, like the crowd has been reminded of some dark part of themselves they've tried to keep secret. The unknown and different makes even the most liberal of us uneasy at times and just acknowledging those dark feelings is both troublingly funny and wonderfully cathartic. It's only after establishing himself as funny and thoughtful guy throughout the set that he's able to take that chance. That joke placed earlier in the special would have seriously risked blowing the whole thing up and losing the audience.
Despite the seemingly effortless, laid-back nature of his delivery, Segura is such a master joke- and storyteller that he's able to deftly glide over all kinds of rocky terrain with little risk of the wheels ever coming off.
Exclaim! is reviewing every standup comedy special currently available on Netflix Canada, including this one. You can find a complete list of reviews so far here.
Segura is such a pro that, as he jumps into talking about race, he never comes across as crossing a line into offense. It's an incredibly tricky thing for even the best white comedians to do but even as he's screaming in his best "aggressive black guy voice" — an amazing bit that ends in him yelling at hip-hop legend Big Daddy Kane — Segura never veers away from funny. And when he calls out the audience for being "weird and white" upon their nervous laugh, ol' Tommy Buns reveals an incredibly keen eye and willingness to call people out on their own hypocrisies.
The startling honesty Segura utilizes in examining his own flaws allows him to turn the mirror on the audience and force them to face their own feelings. When Segura says, "It's okay for me to make jokes about disabled people and people with horrible diseases because they make me uncomfortable and I don't want to be like them," the laugh that comes from the audience a fidgety one, like the crowd has been reminded of some dark part of themselves they've tried to keep secret. The unknown and different makes even the most liberal of us uneasy at times and just acknowledging those dark feelings is both troublingly funny and wonderfully cathartic. It's only after establishing himself as funny and thoughtful guy throughout the set that he's able to take that chance. That joke placed earlier in the special would have seriously risked blowing the whole thing up and losing the audience.
Despite the seemingly effortless, laid-back nature of his delivery, Segura is such a master joke- and storyteller that he's able to deftly glide over all kinds of rocky terrain with little risk of the wheels ever coming off.
Exclaim! is reviewing every standup comedy special currently available on Netflix Canada, including this one. You can find a complete list of reviews so far here.
