Hasan Minhaj: Homecoming King (2017)

Hasan Minhaj was always my favorite correspondent on The Daily Show, so it’s only fitting that, since there’s no News Satire Roundup this week and the show’s last new episode featured his goodbye piece, I should review his standup special.  This is a special that fell through a “so much good stuff to watch, so little time” crack for me, even though I’d heard nothing but great things about it, and I’m glad to have (finally) gotten around to seeing it.

This was my first time seeing Hasan perform outside of The Daily Show or things like the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.  I like that, taking a comedian that you’ve only seen within a very specific context and then seeing what they’re like when they’re calling all the shots.  Obviously, aspects of his overall vibe and performance style remain the same, but it’s cool to see how he’s different in a standup context.

This is such well-put-together standup.  There’s the fact that Hasan has come armed with family photos, rudimentary charts, key Hindi phrases, old social media messages, and national spelling bee footage, all projected onto the wall behind him, but it’s more than that.  It’s the construction of the entire piece.  The anecdotes and routines flow effortlessly into one another – really, it feels like one continuous story, following a natural progression and featuring numerous callbacks and full-circle moments.  Hasan begins with his immigrant parents and his upbringing, spinning us a tale of conditional love, racism, prom dates, and professional struggles/successes, straddling that millennial dichotomy of being raised on dial-up and coming of age with social media.

Hasan makes an early observation that every conversation with his father is like “an M. Night Shyamalan movie” (because immigrant parents love secrets,) and there’s an aspect of that to his standup as well.  His stories are peppered with twists – not just the usual deployment of comic surprise but genuine “can you believe this shit?!” moments from his life, along with sudden changes in tone as his accounts flit from hilarious to sobering and back again.

As for the content, there’s so much amazing stuff here.  I won’t spoil any of the big twists in the stories, but I’ll hit on some of my favorite non-spoilery parts of the special.  Hasan’s earliest birthday memory with his immigrant father.  His explanation of the phrase “log kya kyenge,” which causes a star to fall from the sky every time it’s uttered.  His riff on older and younger siblings.  Watching his father sweep up broken glass from the hate crime committed outside their home after 9/11, especially looking at their different reactions to what happened – his father expecting to pay the “American dream tax,” racism in exchange for opportunity, while the American-born Hasan has the “audacity” to expect equality.  The turn of events taken in adulthood with Bethany Reed.  His experience of meeting John Stewart for the first time.

So, so awesome.  I’m going to miss Hasan on The Daily Show, but I know he’s got more stuff of his own lined up, so good for him.

Warnings

Language (including racial slurs,) sexual references, references to violence, and strong thematic elements.