Sarah Silverman: A Speck of Dust

I have loved much of Sarah's work in the past, but her newest special disappointed me. It deserves a 5 out of 10 because it was funny and witty about 50% of the time. The other 50% was a mixture of political talking points and misinformed scientific facts. I did laugh out loud a few times but the majority of jokes were poorly written, especially by her standards. I think I counted around 5 complex joke premises, all of which were very well executed, but the rest fell flat.

I get it: it's hard to be controversial. A century ago that might mean tar and feathers or burned at the stake, depending to the place you are living. Decades ago, even with the constitutional protections unique to the United States that meant days or even weeks in jails. Today the penalty is simply money: low popularity on social media and the biggest networks not signing contracts with you.

Well, Sarah is trying really hard to have them both: the controversy and the big contracts. And in the end all she gets is the money. Good for her, yet a flat show.

No, I'm sorry, I have to disagree with the rave reviews. I'm a Sarah fan. She's one of the smartest and funniest out there. But this is the wrong direction. There's a lot to enjoy here. Not the belly laugh kind. The kind of thing she excels at, discussing things that actually sound real in her life and posing them in a funny and revelatory way, pointing out the boundaries of our artificially constricted moralities. Fine. I'm up with that. What is different here is her self consciousness. She's a woman who has a great range of facial expressions and usually can't talk without her arms and hands being part of the conversation. Did someone tell her that's not cool? Her style is more mannered in this one, her pauses more mechanical, her facial tics more like an actor's. She was great the way she was. She doesn't need to be slicker. I liked it that sometimes she would be doing a bit and the audience wouldn't seem to be getting it and she'd be so surprised at their dumbness she'd back track to try and get them to see what was funny. Yeah, maybe a bad idea in personal terms. Not slick but human. It was 'the new' cool. Showed how sparky she was and how vulnerable at the same time, that she wanted to be telling you something. Maybe this was a performance on a night she wasn't in her best place. The real Sarah Silverman is better than this.

This isn't a review, just a comment on Silverman preparing a joke by mentioning the landing on Mars in 2012. Someone laughs in the audience and she makes a little remark on that. My nerdy theory: the guy who laughed at the wrong moment knew that we landed on Mars back in 1976, but Silverman made it sound like 2012 was the first time.

Sarah Silverman delivers a compelling, funny routine which closes with her personal medical emergency. First, she starts off the show with metal detectors and death threat. While the audience laughed heartily, I felt a little discombobulated. It's the times we live in and that particular issue is hard to laugh at. Although if I was in the audience, the laughing could be quite cathartic. Anyways, she quickly moves on. With complaining Jew and laser hair removal, the routine builds up well. There is good flow and consistent laughs. Of course, there is plenty of abortion jokes amid the present political climate. At one point, she asks for any religious audience members and only one Lutheran volunteered. The medical emergency is quite funny and there is a fun video proof of its reality to close out the special. In the end, this is standard Silverman comedy with her deadpan delivery and outrageous material. It is a solid one hour show.