Jerry Seinfeld hasn't done stand-up comedy in 22 years. Can you believe that? Well it is true. His one hour special is his first trip to the big stage in over 2 decades and it is pretty great.
There was a lot of talk about why Jerry stopped doing stand-up 20 years ago and one of them was the emergence of PC culture and the fact that comedy became too "dangerous" in the Twitterverse because the mob mentality could cause unwanted attention or even ruin someone's career over what was just in fact a joke. He first stopped doing college campuses, then college towns, then certain other "sensitive" cities, then he stopped altogether.
There is certainly some truth in this statement as we have seen many attempts at taking out certain comedians not just for new jokes, but for jokes they told decades ago (Kevin Hart ring a bell?) So I can't really argue with that. Jerry hasn't exactly been on vacation though, he has been involved with multiple shows including Comedians in Cars getting Coffee which has won multiple Emmy's.
His long awaited stand-up special sees no special effects, no props, no visual aides, nothing but Jerry, a bottle of water, a stool that he never sits on, and a microphone which is oddly not wireless. I guess Jerry is old school.
None of his comedy can be considered anything but family-friendly: I think he only uses swear words once or twice in the entire special. That has always been Jerry's thing though, he isn't foul-mouthed in his acts and never has been as far as I know. He jokes about becoming a family man after resisting marriage / family for nearly 50 years, talks about technology, and basically just life in general. There is no theme, and thankfully no attempts and political messages to the audience.
Jerry is one of the most successful comedians of all time, he doesn't need to pander to the audience.
It wasn't a side-splitting laugh riot or anything, but it was definitely worth seeing. I was a bit surprised that after a lot of laughs his last bit that he ends on was actually one of the weaker bits of the entire show. Watch this and see if you agree with me!
It's on Neflix pretty much worldwide starting on May 5th.
