Pete Holmes: Dirty Clean

I had never seen a Pete Holmes special before.. I am wondering if this might be an "aquired taste". I spontaneously watched this on HBO Max and was surprised at how bad it was. Each bit fell flat on me but the audience seemed to enjoy. I cringed through a lot of it. I find myself being uncomfortable during bits (sometimes positively) but this was a weird feeling from corniness and obnoxious voices. I was expecting it to be somewhat decent from the rating on here, but it was quite disappointing. I don't think I'll check anything else out from this guy, one of the most unfunny specials I've seen.

His persona is refreshing amongst the barrage of deadpan, cynical, or outright nihilistic comedians these days. Although some of the jokes were glorified analyses of childish thought processes (voices in head, farting, etc), they were entertaining nonetheless. The mark of a good comedian is not only good content, but someone who can entertain with material ranging from trash to brilliant. Being able to engage an audience with utter trash (toilet humor) is one skill, and being able to harness good content and present it with poignancy and maturity is another. Holmes heavily demonstrates the former skill, but it is a nice break from most comedians these days. While comedians like Louis CK and Tom Segura are more like the complex, impactful dark rides at Disneyland, Holmes is like the 80 mph roller coaster with ten loops and sudden drops. It might not stick with you longer, but it will be way more thrilling while you're on it.

Granted, he's not exactly telling extreme knee-slappers but he gets me to smile just because of how he behaves - it's childish, but wholesome, and when he nails a joke it's twice as funny as if a mumbling negative comedian did it.

So yeah, as a personality he's great. I loved his Badman stuff on YouTube before. I think he needs to be dirtier and edgier, which doesn't mean more politics. Just more edgy stuff.

But if he wants to stay reasonably clean, that's respectable too. I'll definitely watch whatever he does next either way.

This was an ok stand up special. I watched some of the hightlights on YouTube and for the most part the hightlights I watched were as good as it gets. He's an engaging story teller, but the comedy wasn't hilarious.

Interestingly, most of his comedy could be considered clean except he habitually throws in swearing which seems to be his way to be more provacative. Instead, it comes off as a reach. Maybe less swearing and more focus on clever responses would tidy up the delivery? This is fine standup special but nothing great about it.

What I liked about Pete-his ability to be funny without resorting to toilet humor and tons of F-bombs- is gone.