Good One

Originally from Boston, longtime stand-up Sam Jay is an Emmy-nominated writer for “Saturday Night Live” -- her most notable SNL sketches include “Them Trumps,” recent “Black Jeopardy”s, and “Released Early” (from the “At Home” editions). In 2018, she made her Netflix debut on “The Comedy Lineup” and released her first stand-up album, “Donna’s Daughter.”

In this episode Sam talks to host Jesse David Fox about her airplane joke, birthed from a fear of death plus an increase in air travel. She notes that most debut stand-up specials have some sort of airplane joke, but she doesn’t care; hers is still funny.

You can watch Sam’s new special, 3 In The Morning, on Netflix. You can follow Sam on Twitter and Instagram. Follow Jesse David Fox on Twitter and Instagram.

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Back in April, when most of the world had been in lockdown for about a month, we asked Roy Wood Jr. and Maria Bamford what it was like to try to perform comedy. At the time, the outlook for comedy (and the world) was uncertain and not especially hopeful.

Four months later, Jesse David Fox checks in with five stand-ups to see how they’ve adapted, and how comedy has changed.

Nikki Glaser (social media @NikkiGlaser) was all set to start her first theater stand-up tour when COVID-19 hit, and she decided to go back home to St. Louis to be with her parents for a week or two. Five months later, she’s still there, and wondering if stand-up will ever really return.  

Los Angeles-based comedian Jenny Yang (@JennyYangTV) has taken Zoom comedy performances to a whole new level by hosting shows on everyone’s favorite social simulation video game, Animal Crossing: New Horizons.

On July 3rd, Nore Davis (@NoreDavis) released his latest comedy album, Live from the Comedy Trap House, four days after taping it in front of an audience over Zoom. The album is the first of its kind, recorded in quarantine about quarantine.

A writer on “CONAN,” Laurie Kilmartin (@anylaurie16) may be best known for tweeting and then filming a special of jokes about her father dying of cancer in 2014. She then wrote a book about the grieving process, Dead People Suck. So it may not have been too surprising that when her mother got COVID-19 early this summer, her first instinct was to tweet about it.

Jim Gaffigan (@JimGaffigan) was in Europe when things started shutting down, working on a special in which he does a set of comedy completely about the country he’s performing in. He was only able to finish two countries in time - Canada and Spain. That special, The Pale Tourist, came out on July 24 on Amazon Prime. Now back in the U.S., Jim has tried performing shows at drive-ins, with the audience inside their cars. It’s as surreal as it sounds. 

Follow Jesse David Fox on Twitter and Instagram.

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This week’s guest is standup comedian, The Daily Show correspondent, and host of the podcast That Blackass Show, Dulce Sloan. Dulce has appeared on Good One before, as part of a Clusterfest panel with Trevor Noah and The Daily Show correspondents.

In this episode, Jesse David Fox talks to Dulce about her standup. The joke she chose to discuss is about New York City, which she moved to when she joined The Daily Show in 2017. Dulce dedicated the first third of her 2019 Comedy Central half-hour special to how much she dislikes New York, especially after moving there from Los Angeles, and growing up in Atlanta.  

You can listen to Dulce’s podcast, That Blackass Show, wherever you get your podcasts. You can watch her Comedy Central Stand-Up Presents half hour special on the Comedy Central website. You can follow Dulce on Twitter and Instagram. Follow Jesse David Fox on Twitter and Instagram.

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As we pass the halfway mark on this unprecedented year, host Jesse David Fox and Vulture staff writer Kathryn VanArendonk review her rankings of 2020’s best standup specials so far. 

The specials discussed, in alphabetical order by first name:

Dave Chappelle, 8:46, available on Netflix’s YouTube account.

Fortune Feimster, Sweet & Salty (Netflix)

Hannah Gadsby, Douglas (Netflix)

Leslie Jones, Time Machine (Netflix)

Marc Maron, End Times Fun (Netflix)

Maria Bamford, Weakness Is the Brand (Amazon Prime / VOD) 

Patton Oswalt, I Love Everything (Netflix)

Taylor Tomlinson, Quarter-Life Crisis (Netflix)

Ted Alexandro, Stay at Home Comedian (YouTube)

Yvonne Orji, Momma, I Made It (HBO)

You can follow Kathryn VanArendonk on Twitter. Follow Jesse David Fox on Twitter and Instagram.

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In this week’s episode, host Jesse David Fox calls up stand-up comedian and actor Jenny Slate, who is known for her one-season stint on SNL and appearances on Kroll Show and Parks & Recreation, her breakout role in the 2014 indie film Obvious Child, her voicing the incredibly adorable Marcel the Shell, and much more.

The two discuss Jenny’s recent book “Little Weirds” and how writing it changed her life, and she explains why the Nanette discourse of 2018 inspired her to not only return to stand-up, but to record a special for the first time ever. Oh, and Jenny may or may not tell a story about a high so absolutely frightening, it made her quit weed for good.

You can watch Jenny’s new special, Stage Fright, on Netflix. You can follow Jenny on Instagram and Twitter. Follow Jesse David Fox on Twitter and Instagram.

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This week, host Jesse David Fox chats with Saturday Night Live veteran Aidy Bryant, who has been a highlight of the show since she joined in 2012. Bryant also currently stars in and executive produces the Hulu series Shrill, a show that is “about a fat young woman who wants to change her life — but not her body.”

In this Good One episode, Jesse talks to Aidy about her SNL sketch “Overnight Salad,” a digital short that aired in the last episode before quarantine shut down in-studio production. As Aidy discusses in the interview, it’s a sketch that she might not have felt comfortable pitching or writing much earlier in her career. Similarly, Shrill feels like a creative milestone in Aidy’s career, with characters and humor that feel more authentically Aidy. 

You can watch episodes of Shrill on Hulu. Episodes of Saturday Night Live are available on Hulu or the NBC app, and you can catch clips on YouTube. You can follow Aidy on Instagram. Follow Jesse David Fox on Twitter and Instagram.

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While an episode of Hasan Minhaj’s political comedy talk show “Patriot Act” usually takes weeks, if not months, of research and writing, after the murder of George Floyd at the hands of the Minneapolis police on May 25th, Hasan felt he couldn’t wait -- he needed to speak out right away. The result was “We Cannot Stay Silent About George Floyd,” a powerful digital short released on Wednesday, June 3rd, which would eventually be uploaded on Netflix as a regular episode. Though there is comedy throughout the 12-minute address, often Hasan eschews laughs to convey the gravity of his words. 

In this episode, host Jesse David Fox talks to the former “Daily Show” correspondent about when comedy is most effective to raise difficult issues and when it’s not, how his show differs from other late night talk shows, and whether Hasan should have become a civil rights lawyer instead of a comedian.

You can watch all six seasons of “Patriot Act” on Netflix. You can follow Hasan on Twitter and Instagram. Follow Jesse David Fox on Twitter and Instagram.

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This week, host Jesse David Fox calls up comedian and actor Yvonne Orji. Yvonne appears on the HBO series Insecure as Molly, Issa Dee’s best friend, but this week Yvonne is on to talk about her new hour special, “Momma, I Made It!”

Born in Nigeria and raised in Maryland, Yvonne took an unusual path to comedy. She was attending graduate school in Washington, D.C. for a master’s degree in public health when she decided to compete in a local beauty pageant. When it came to the talent portion of the competition, she couldn’t think of a talent, so she decided to try telling jokes. That led to a career change and years on the comedy club circuit, culminating in Yvonne opening for Chris Rock on his 2017 Total Blackout tour. 

With her new special, Yvonne is ready to show people who she really is. Beyond her standup, which is so good - joyous and filled with hyper-specific, richly drawn characters - the special includes documentary footage of Yvonne returning to Nigeria to visit her family. Yvonne’s impressions of her family members are so funny, but it’s another level to meet those people and see how spot on she is.

The clip of Yvonne’s joke from “Momma, I Made It!” courtesy HBO. You can follow Yvonne on Twitter and Instagram. Follow Jesse David Fox on Twitter and Instagram.

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This week, host Jesse David Fox talks to comedian and prankster extraordinaire Eric Andre. You may know Eric from his Adult Swim show, The Eric Andre Show, but this week he’s on Good One to talk about his first hour stand-up special, Legalize Everything.

This interview was recorded during the first week in June, a time which saw the issues of police brutality, institutional racism and flat out bigotry towards black people in America boil over, as countless Americans broke quarantine to protest the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and so many others at the hands of police in this country every year. During this time, Eric joined in the widespread protests and called for the Los Angeles police chief to be fired. 

In that vein, Eric and Jesse discuss a joke from his special about “Cops,” the TV show that for over 30 years served essentially as propaganda for police departments across the world. Eric wrote the joke over a decade ago; the fact that it’s still relevant today says everything.

Days after this interview was conducted, the Paramount Network canceled Cops.

You can watch Legalize Everything on Netflix starting June 23rd. You can follow Eric on Twitter and Instagram. Follow Jesse David Fox on Twitter and Instagram.

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This week, host Jesse David Fox calls up legendary comedy writer/director/producer Judd Apatow. You know, Anchorman, Superbad, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Step Brothers, Bridesmaids, Girls, Pee-Wee’s Big Holiday, Popstar, The Big Sick, Love -- any of these ring a bell? 

In this episode, Jesse talks to Judd about his return to the director’s chair. Judd got his start as a director in 1998 on The Larry Sanders Show and went on to direct episodes of Freaks and Geeks and Undeclared. His feature film debut came in 2005, when he made The 40-Year-Old Virgin with Steve Carell, quickly followed by Knocked Up in 2007, the 2009 Adam Sandler film about comedy, Funny People, and 2012’s This Is 40. Eventually, after spending years working with Amy Schumer developing Trainwreck, he decided to direct it. Now, five years after Trainwreck, Judd has his latest offering: The King of Staten Island. A fictionalized version of star Pete Davidson’s life, it’s a bit of a departure for Judd in terms of the world it depicts, the themes it explores, and the balance of drama and comedy.

You can watch The King of Staten Island on Video on Demand on June 12th. You can follow Judd on Twitter and Instagram. Follow Jesse David Fox on Twitter and Instagram.

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