The Current South-Asian American Comedy Renaissance (Kumail Nanjiani, Aziz Ansari, Hasan Minhaj, Hari Kondabolu, Aperna Nancherl etc.)

Nanjiani + Showalter's "The Big Sick" is p great.

Talk about the exploits of Kumail and other participants in this relatively recent phenomenon here

I hope I'm not the only person that's seen the Big Sick, it's better than Showalter's Sally Fields film, maybe on par with They Came Together. Lots of great lines and nuanced characters.

Ever since I listened to Kumail's first album, all I have to do to make myself laugh is think, "Aloo Master would never have allowed this!"

I mostly know Kumail from his podcast about the X-Files. I was impressed at how serious he was about it.

Someone on the (x) movies thread hated The Big Sick so it's encouraging that you liked it.

I'll need to search Hasan Minhaj. Only one I haven't heard of here.

he did the White House Correspondents Dinner this year. Also Daily Show guy.

Mindy Kaling kinda got this ball rolling i guess?

Not a fan of Kondabolu but this should be interesting:

http://www.vulture.com/2017/07/the-problem-with-apu-trailer-racist-simpsons-character.html

it was mentioned on one of the Simpsons threads i think and i saw somebody link the trailer on Facebook the other week. looks very otm, right down to whoever it is from the show doing the "we mock everybody" excuse

apu has the funniest line in that trailer lol

I still haven't watched Hasan's stand up special on Netflix, but the story he told of his family on an episode of The Moth was super heavy (with welcome comedic asides). I like him on TDS.

I like Hari on the Politically Re-Active podcast too, but I've still never listened to his stand up.

Arish Singh did a special benefit edition of the Monkey Wrench show he co-presents the night before the DSA convention started in Chicago last week.

http://elasticarts.org/event/monkey-wrench-2/

watching white leftist comedians like @arishish fundraise for DSA at @MonkeyWrenchChi... time to learn what we gotta do about Syria pic.twitter.com/yL2gIKHuXV

— Lana Del Raytheon (@LanaDelRaytheon) August 3, 2017

Minhaj's special Homecoming King was really good imo, genuinely affecting as well as funny and relatable (although I still don't know what a homecoming is and am trying to see if I can go through life without learning so don't tell me). I don't really care for Ansari that much. He worked OK on Parks and Recreation because he was supposed to be shallow. If Canadians count, Sugar Sammy > Russell Peters but I feel like there's something qualitatively different about what they do, so maybe they shouldn't. (Never completely worked out what I think of Shaun Majumder.)

it was mentioned on one of the Simpsons threads i think

Yeah, I mentioned it. Will def watch.

Liked The Big Sick. Thought it was nice that they got his dad's favourite film star to play the father and he was funny.

Sugar Sammy

haha i just watched the mind of a chef episode where they are in Montreal and Aziz Ansari is there and someone asks him if he's Sugar Sammy. and that's all I know about Sugar Sammy.

Liked this a lot. Loved that he was apparently doing a Swimming to Cambodia play. This is the film his parents saw:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lF926PJ30LQ

It's a remake of Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, and I really want to see it.

I like the dad joke about falling

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zYZ5efCcK_s

lol @ "Fucker's Cock"

You've misspelled Aparna Nancherla in the thread title.

true statement

loved that movie
also avidly waiting for kondabolu's "the truth about apu"

minhaj white house correspondents dinner is all-time

Hasan Minhaj's new netflix show, Patriot Act, is worth checking out. The style is more or less a mix of Samantha Bee's and John Oliver's. Bee: he stands and talks to an audience in a kind of stand-up/lecture hybrid; there are self-consciously dark, bleak jokes delivered counter-intuitively. Oliver: he takes one issue and explains it in detail; there's a slightly worrying sense that he might also repeat joke forms too much, like when Oliver yells at imaginary privileged kids or w/e.

The primary difference, obviously, is that his perspective as an Indian American Muslim is at the fore. My Indian American partner, at least, loves the show so far, and it seems unique to me in unapologetically presenting South Asian cultural mores as mainstream or common knowledge. It can feel a little awkward at times--the presence of the audience doesn't add much, and I could see his affectedly enthused delivery style bothering some people (almost feels pitched at people watching on their phones)--but I'm hopeful it'll feel a little more relaxed as he gets seasoned.

haaaaated that guy's previous special so much. his delivery is just awful

ha then definitely don't watch this!

does he use his facebook timeline as a video backdrop in this one

No, and actually the more impersonal nature of this format might make it slightly more appealing. It's also shorter. But the physical and vocal aspects of his delivery are still v close to annoying even for someone who basically likes the show

I liked his previous special. It was more of a one-man-show than a stand up special, though. Haven't caught the new shjow yet. I do think he's pretty funny.

I'm on the fence about the two episodes I saw. It's a weird TED talk/Apple keynote parody style, and his delivery is weird. TBF though he's just starting off.

xp
the thing with the new show is that it's fairly timely, meaning that going back and watching the ep about Saudi Arabia in a few months might not really work. I'm not sure netflix can really pull that kind of thing off...partially because I've not watched any of them before

I like this pretty well so far and I'm not even really a fan of the genre. I legit loved Homecoming King, though. Really enjoy his hyperactive delivery.

I've watched all the episodes. Love it. But yeah, his delivery needs work.

It's like his faux youtube vlogger bit on the Daily Show, except he's still doing the bit. He has such good hair though.

i read about this guy in the nyt and i want his show to succeed but i already don’t
really care for stand-up and when he called it a “woke TED talk” in front of “a powerpoint designed by michael bay” it really killed my enthusiasm for actually watching it

^^^

I don't think it really qualifies as standup, it's more like a lecture that's trying to be funny

I think that's fair re: Homecoming King. I'd previously heard the part of HK about his sister on the "storytelling" podcast Snap Judgment, which was also a more appropriate context for that special than regular stand-up.

btw, the Aperna Nancherla episode in one of netflix's stand-up series has a great use of multimedia/powerpoint in a more traditional stand-up set

I guess I think of Patriot Act episodes as more like lectures (with some jokes) in the sense of being didactic - but I think they do a decent job of it. I think of Homecoming King, like Nanette, as a heavily autiobiographical monologue where humour is present but is not the whole point, although it's obv lighter than Nanette.

Patriot Act has definitely grown on me, or maybe I've gotten used to the pacing. The "Oil" episode was particuarly good.

I watched The Big Sick two weeks ago. It wasn't what I expected, but I really liked it.

https://www.vulture.com/2019/01/netflix-pulls-episode-of-hasan-minhajs-show-in-saudi-arabia.html
very chickenshit of netflix imo

Tbf, we're talking about a regime that has people killed for criticizing it. I was surprised to learn that Patriot Act ever ran in Saudi Arabia in the first place.

sure but why choose to run it and wait for the government to ask you to take it down?

i was more shocked when I thought that they pulled the episode completely. pulled in in SA....eh. agree I'm surprised it was even running there

Also this thread

A couple years ago, when I was writing for American Dad!, I needed an Arabic speaker for a small part. Our casting director recommended a Saudi comedian, who happened to be in LA for a couple months shooting a tv show. His name is Fahad Albutairi.

— Kirk Rudell (@krudell) January 2, 2019

thanks for sharing that; very sad.

same

it's hard for me to reconcile how someone with empathy who is good at telling a story could be a writer for American Dad.

you take the jobs you can get

i guess that's true, poor bastard. the little I've seen of that show is I think even worse than Family Guy. at least FG has a couple of characters that are appealing or at least memorable, namely Stewie and Brian. I feel like every character on American Dad is distinctly unappealing to even look at, let alone listen to.

I hear American Dad was really born in Canada

American Dad was good (first few series anyway), much better than contemporary Family Guy or Simpsons

American Dad definitely had its moments, especially the weird completely non-canon episodes

at least FG has a couple of characters that are appealing or at least memorable, namely Stewie and Brian.
― Evans on Hammond (evol j), Thursday, January 3, 2019 8:57 PM

I really cant be doing with any of them

Super excited about Love Birds

https://variety.com/2019/film/news/kumail-nanjiani-issa-rae-lovebirds-romantic-comedy-1203111347/

The new batch of Patriot Acts has been excellent so far. I can't tell if I've adjusted to the format/tone or if Minhaj has improved in the role or both, but I think every episode has been noticeably better than the previous season (not everything lands of course). I especially like that they return to particular targets, like horrific scumbag Betsy DeVos who really should be under intense scrutiny. I also find the show genuinely informative--both the Chinese Censorship and Drug Pricing episodes went a step deeper than I was expecting at the outset.

Also, I watched the first season of Crashing a while back and just started Corporate--I can't wait for Aperna Nancherla to get some kind of starring vehicle soon.

Corporate is really good and Nancherla is really good in them.
Patriot Act is the best comedy/news show going.

I liked the Chinese censorship ep a lot, yeah.

Kumail Nanjiani joined the Marvel Cinematic Universe and got absolutely ripped https://t.co/7uz0JMT627 pic.twitter.com/6hk4nBaAKo

— UPROXX (@UPROXX) December 16, 2019

holy shit

2nd ab from bottom right is the funniest

I booked Kumail to do stand-up a few times at a variety show I hosted 15 years ago. He was the nicest guy, and I will always root for him.

welcome to Sixpackistan

Patriot Act canceled. Sad, I was a big fan. Also, terrible timing, you'd think they would want to keep it going for the election. Maybe Hasan got a better deal elsewhere...

I hope so! Consistently one of the best shows on tv IMO, very sad to see it go.

Hasan's new special, The King's Jester, is up on Netflix. Pretty good - his see-sawing between flippant millenial japes and bleak sincerity is constantly on the edge of being too preachy or serious, but the jokes are really funny. (And those serious stories are totally worth hearing.)

What I wonder - and maybe he doesn't want to be too explicit because this special is in fact, on Netflix - how much of Patriot Act was Netflix axing it and how much of it was him walking away, due to some of the things he talks about in this.

ok, so what do we make of this?

you mean this?
https://www.newyorker.com/news/annals-of-communications/hasan-minhajs-emotional-truths

It would be easier to dismiss if he hadn't made the serious stories such a core piece of his specials... I think what he did was pretty wrong considering how much sympathy he sopped up.

I also wonder if this was suspiciously timed and fed by someone else in the running for Daily Show host since Hasan is supposedly the front runner

Hasan is supposedly the front runner

Fucked up if true, since Roy Wood Jr. is clearly the MVP of that cast.

Yeah this is disappointing. everyone expects comics to embellish and even make stuff up, but this strikes me as a step beyond. He's really fucked himself here and I can't really sympathize with him. It's too bad as he is funny.