Trevor Noah: I Wish You Would (2022)

I didn’t watch Trevor Noah’s most recent Netflix special when it initially came out last year. It dropped shortly before his last episode of The Daily Show, and I wanted to save it for later, knowing that soon I wouldn’t be seeing Noah on my screens regularly anymore. Of course, I quickly forgot about it, so my plan actually worked out better than I thought! It’s been ten months since he left the show, and the show itself has been off the air for five due to the writers’ strike. But now that the strike has finally been resolved and The Daily Show has a return date, I remembered that I never checked out this special.

And honestly, it felt so good to have new Trevor Noah comedy to watch. I Wish You Would covers a handful of good topics mixed with a healthy dollop of fun. Early on, we get an older bit I’d seen before—Trevor making an uncomfortable discovery about his spoken German—but it’s attached to a larger routine that was all new to me. Talking about the German language leads into some ruminations on the word schadenfreude. Trevor notes, “Fun fact: that word was never translated into another language. I wonder why.” But he quickly admits that we all experience schadenfreude and dives into assorted examples, the best of which looks at the relationship between colonized nations and the British royal family. The bit on Elizabeth II’s death is especially good—I loved, “Buried with the jewels, #winning! You want the colonies to be sad? Those are their jewels!”

I’ve always liked Trevor’s talent for creating chains of routines, where one topic flows fluidly into another and another, each one a jumping-off point for the next. It can make it hard to reduce his comedy into shorter bite-sized clips, but I love seeing it in action in these longer-form settings. Ragging on people making dumb decisions in horror movies is nothing new, but I really like the way Trevor segues from this topic into the pandemic, realizing how dumb many people became once they were in a situation where they needed to take practical steps to stay safe. “If there’s one thing coronavirus did, it taught me how many of my friends are absolute idiots,” he remarks. “Everyone studied at the University of Facebook.”

Once he starts in on the subject of COVID, Trevor covers it from several different insightful and entertaining angles. We get the way a real-life global disaster is like nothing he imagined based on movies—“We were supposed to be a team. Will Smith was supposed to be our hero. None of it went as planned!” There’s an excellent bit about COVID response on the African continent compared to the Western world, which also looks back on media coverage of Ebola in the mid-2010s. And I love Trevor’s pet “conspiracy theory” that the pandemic came about due to too much wishing, saying, “COVID was essentially like an asshole genie that gave us everything we asked for.” We look at all the people who wished they could spend less time at the office, more time with their kids, and all day every day with their significant other. Whoops!

There’s a fun riff on world leaders—we start by comparing Boris Johnson and Donald Trump’s reactions to getting COVID, then dovetail into a bit on how every U.S. president has a weird voice. Sure, it’s mainly an excuse for Trevor to trot out various presidential impressions, but he does it well, so I’m certainly not about to complain. Plus, I love him imagining someone without a weird voice trying to campaign and getting heckled offstage as a “normal-sounding-ass bitch.”

The final big set piece of the special revolves around an anecdote about ordering Indian food in Scotland, but of course it’s not merely that. It starts with a bit on Justin Trudeau—“He has the most adorable scandals. Are you kidding me?”—takes a detour to Trevor’s childhood, and includes the delightful line, “My tongue discovered its purpose!” It also has plenty of accent work, another thing Trevor does very well. And even apart from the side bits, the main anecdote takes all kinds of hilarious and suspenseful turns.

This is a great special, and I think I was able to appreciate it even more by watching it now instead of last year. It’s been so long since I was getting a regular dose of Trevor’s comedy and commentary, and seeing his standup again was so refreshing and fun.

Warnings

Language (including the N-word,) sexual references, and thematic elements.

Trevor Noah: Son of Patricia (2018)

No News Satire Roundup this week, since all my shows are off.  Luckily, though, I have Trevor Noah’s latest Netflix special to enjoy.  While it includes many of the same routines from when I saw him perform live last November, it’s still a great time.

Yes, I’ve seen a lot of this before:  the first time Trevor ate tacos, Trevor’s experience meeting President Obama, Trevor’s mom’s advice for how to deal with racists, and so forth.  I don’t mind seeing them again, however.  Much like his Afraid of the Dark special, which similarly featured a lot of bits I’d already seen him do live, it’s nice to have this set recorded so I can go back and revisit them.  How much do I love Trevor’s recurring bit about the difference between the languages “English” and “American,” or his belief that people who hate immigrants shouldn’t be allowed to eat immigrant food?  These routines are too good to just see once.

The main story that I hadn’t previously heard was Trevor’s first extended sequence, a long story about a trip to Bali.  I always enjoy his anecdotes and observations from his travels around the world (I think it was in Afraid of the Dark that he called travel the cure for ignorance – love that,) and this one is a doozy.  It plays with the theme of what white people consider fun travel plans vs. Black people, touches on colonialism, features multiple accents from Trevor, and includes a bit of mortal peril, all topped with some genuine human absurdity.  I laughed so hard!

The “what white people do for fun” angle is especially interesting to me.  I’ve heard Trevor talk about this sort of thing before – that, as someone who grew up incredibly poor, he hasn’t absolutely no reason to “rough it” by going camping – but it goes deeper here.  I appreciate his horror at discovering what the “authentic Balinese experience” his friends sign them up for actually entails, and I know exactly the sort of travel excursion he’s talking about.  It’s the sort of thing that I think many people just accept as a normal vacation activity until he lays it out in detail and, hearing it described by someone who doesn’t have that vantage point, you finally hear  the inherent bizarreness (and even grotesqueness) of it.  In this story, Trevor’s silent “eye conversation” with the Balinese man is a definite highlight.

There’s so much to enjoy and appreciate in Trevor’s comedy, but for me, the little moments are what really make it sing.  Near the start of the hilarious taco sequence, I love the bit where his American roommate announces that he’s starving and Trevor replies, “I think you mean you’re hungry, Dave.”  At this point, we’ve already been primed that we’re going to be dealing with “English” vs. “American,” and the language difference that caps the story is just staggeringly funny, but I love this brief second he takes to highlight this fundamental difference in their experiences and how that colors their language in more than just colloquial ways.  There’s no commentary or tangent off of this joke; he just slips it in and then gets back to tacos.  Little things like this really kick the whole set up a notch.

Warnings

Strong thematic elements and language (including the N-word and other racial slurs.)

Trevor Noah: Afraid of the Dark (2017)

I saw this not long after it first aired, but I’ve been sitting on my review for a while (goes to show how rarely Last Week Tonight and The Daily Show are both off on the same week!)  Although this special shares a lot of material in common with the live show I saw Noah do in 2016, it still makes for a good time, and there’s some good new stuff to go along with it.

Honestly, I’m glad the special includes routines I saw live, because it’s good to have a place I can go back to and rewatch them to my heart’s content.  What were, for me, the crowning jewels of that live show – the riff on a hypothetical Black James Bond and imagining the first time Obama met Nelson Mandela (with Mandela passing down the secret of “first Black president voice” – are both preserved here, super funny and energetic.  Not to mention well-executed – he carries on a long imaginary conversation between Obama and Mandela, and the voices are perfect throughout.

While those two stories are pretty much as I (so fondly) remember them, other repeated routines have had new material added.  He throws in some extra jokes about his misadventures drinking in Scotland, and his routine about how accents affect our perception of people – with particular emphasis on the fear invoked by Russian accents – is given a lot more dimension.  It was a smart bit and an excellent observation when I saw it last year, but Noah fleshes it out even more in the special.  Here, he examines the difference between someone speaking English with a foreign accent and speaking in their native language, pondering his different reactions to the two.  He also goes into a great routine about his plan for women to combat harassment by learning to do a Russian accent to strike fear into the hearts of creeps everywhere, not to mention his tale about his own experience using a Russian accent to counteract his fear of the dark (hence the title.)

There’s other good material as well.  The bit about African traffic lights is fun, and the running theme of immigration, xenophobia, and the fear of what we haven’t encountered/have only encountered glancingly is much appreciated.  On the latter front, his talk of Brexit and anti-immigrant sentiment in Britain, with a great riff on imperialism, is particularly good.  And as usual, in the midst of the comedy, even the pointed comedy that specifically uses the jokes to make his point, he has to sprinkle in those little moments that are completely earnest and without a hint of satire or cheek.  Here, one of my favorites is his declaration that travel is “the antidote to ignorance.”  Not to get all “in these troubled times” about it, but that’s an antidote that’s sorely needed these days.

Warnings

Thematic elements, language, and references to sex/drinking/violence.

Trevor Noah: November 17th, 2017 (Live)

I had a chance to see Trevor Noah live for a second time last week, and I had an amazing time.  A mix of bits I’d seen before and things I hadn’t, but it was still awesome to see live – I laughed so hard, pretty much from start to finish.  And since Last Week Tonight wrapped up their season for the year and The Daily Show was off this week for Thanksgiving, it was pretty much the perfect time to have a live show to review.

Like I said, quite a bit I’d heard before, both from The Daily Show and from different standup clips I’ve seen.  Mostly, though, it was just short bits/observations here and there, like the difficulty of driving on the left side of the car or how Trump wants to be president but not “do” president.  In each case, they were in the middle of longer material that I wasn’t familiar with.

There were two longer stories I’d seen before, one about the N-word and another about Trevor’s first time eating tacos.  In the latter case, I’d previously seen a clip of him doing maybe 4-5 minutes on the whole anecdote, but here, with Trevor’s tangential style of delivery, I bet it took at least 20.  It really highlighted to me that, as a stand-up, it’s hard to get a sense of what he’s really like in a clip or short snippet.  On The Daily Show, of course, the stories fit into nice 5-to-10-minute segments, but onstage, Trevor really knows how to take his times getting somewhere, going on numerous detours and coming back to his main point just often enough that you remember what story he’s telling.  Granted, I haven’t seen a ton of full stand-up shows, but that style strikes me as fairly unique.

As for stuff that was new to me, there was plenty to love.  He had a fun story about when he got to interview Obama for The Daily Show and an absolutely hysterical bit about trap music – I was dying.  He also had a really great routine about immigration and xenophobia; I loved his proposal that anyone who hates immigrants shouldn’t be allowed to eat immigrant food, and he had some terrific insights on white people who are afraid of “becoming the minority” in America.

Overall, a really fantastic show.  As usual, a lot of great observations about race, culture, and politics, some good silly stuff, and just an all-around great time.  I’m continually impressed by Trevor’s sharpness and talent.

Warnings

Language (including the N-word,) a few drug references, and thematic elements.

Trevor Noah: That’s Racist (2012)

From what I gather, this is the first big standup show Trevor Noah did in South Africa after he began working in the American comedy scene.  Coming home is a definite theme of the show, relishing everything he missed about South Africa while he was away and filling his audience in on American perspectives of Africa.

One thing I like about Noah’s standup specials performed in South Africa is how he does routines reflecting on his fame there.  It has a different tone to his American standup – there, his fame is much more newfound and Daily Show-related, thrust into a spotlight that he still can’t quite believe, but in South Africa, he’s a true household name.  Here, I like his bits on reading about his excursion to the States in South African newspapers (“Trevor Noah Flees to Hollywood!”) and sharing about his experiences with Afrikaans fans.

There are only a few bits I’ve already heard before, and even then, it’s not full routines, just elements and individual jokes I’ve seen in other specials of Noah’s.  I remember his story about being introduced in standup sets in the U.S. as an “African comic” (with the audience expecting him to come out dressed in leopard skins and telling monkey jokes,) although there’s much more of an insider slant to the humor as he tells his fellow countrymen and women about how Americans react to him.  I also recognize bits about the N-word in a larger routine on derogatory slurs (he focuses more on the K-word, a slur used in South Africa) and what people can do to reduce the power of ugly words.  In addition, there are a couple of anecdotes I recognize from Born a Crime, including his grandfather calling his “mastuh” and his grandmother being afraid to whup him because of how his light skin would bruise.

As seems to be common in Noah’s standup specials, the strongest material is in the last half-hour.  After warming things up with a lot of fun stories and snarky insights, he ends the show with several extended, hard-hitting routines about racism.  I love his explanation of B.E.E., a post-apartheid government program that aims to increase equality in employment between races in South Africa.  As with affirmative action, there are white people in South Africa who argue that B.E.E. gives Black people an “unfair advantage,” but Noah draws a smart analogy using Paralympic/Olympic athlete Oscar Pistorius (this was before the murder and subsequent trial/imprisonment,) explaining that apartheid “cut the legs off” of South Africa’s Black population and B.E.E. is an attempt to get them fitted with and acclimated to prosthetics.  And I really adore how he covers a news story about a white DJ who got in trouble for racial slurs (the aforementioned K-word.)  Trevor takes him to task, along with anyone else who’s ever offered up anger as an excuse for racism.  To illustrate his point, he uses a fantastic, darkly-funny story about getting a whupping from his mom and how, as furious as he would get with her over it (praying for Jesus to please kill his mom for him,) it would never “make him” call his mom the K-word – instead, he insists, the racism is inside the people who say these things and anger only brings it to the surface.  I also like his spitballing on the idea of having a Racists Anonymous for recovering bigots.

Warnings

Language (including discussion of racial slurs,) sexual references, and thematic elements.