AAfter two years of closed houses and Zoom comedy concerts, I am in no rush to see monologues performed before absent audiences again. But I’ll make an exception for Norm Macdonald, whose Nothing Special, performed for no one, lands on Netflix today. Like the Maria Bamford set he performed only for his parents, is one of those specials where the resonant silences are a compelling part of the point. The point is that Macdonald died last year of cancer. She recorded this special in the summer of 2020, at her home, as a precautionary measure before undergoing a medical procedure. He “didn’t want to leave anything on the table,” a pre-show caption tells us, “in case things went wrong.” The set now has the feel of a last will and testament, launching with commentary from a sextet of Macdonald’s illustrious friends.
There is a symmetry at play here, since the first viral comedy set of the coronavirus era It was Macdonald’s, at the Hollywood Improv the day before the United States went into lockdown. “It’s funny how now we all know how we’re going to die,” she joked, which sounds particularly bittersweet given that she’s known for years and (characteristically) hid it from everyone. And now here we are with another Macdonald video book ending the Covid years, hopefully the last closed stand-up show we’ll ever have to watch. And it’s worth doing, for Norm fans interested in seeing his hero “reconciling his mortality in front of us,” as Dave Chappelle describes it in the post-show chat; and for the uninitiated from Norm, eager to see what all the fuss was about when Macdonald died in September last year.
What the format focuses on, with its close-up of Macdonald from the shoulders up, is the comedic value of his face. He was one of those rare comedians with “funny bones,” praised David Baddiel, but it’s in his face (laughter flickering around his lips, expressive eyes) where that grace lies. (“When he smiles,” says Chappelle, “I can imagine him as a child.”) It is a face that forbids us to take it seriously, ever to forget that what is happening is a comedy, that even the most true-ringing parts or the most throwaways are ticklish constructs designed to make us (or Macdonald) laugh.
Some may be upset about that: the “just kidding” defense has been used and abused to excuse all sorts of nasty stuff over the years. There will be no shortage of nasty clips of Macdonald on the Internet, where he is celebrated for his “savage” attacks on OJ Simpson, Michael Jackson, Hillary Clinton and others during his stint as host of Saturday Night Live’s fake news bulletin Weekend Update. Macdonald certainly had that streak of evil common to many comics, which leads to even more awkwardness when the correction might set the rest of us back. As Chappelle, David Letterman and company comment on Netflix, this real-world gambling addict also had the urges of a gambler onstage, gambling it all on the jokes he loved, even when audience reaction threatened a streak. loser “Her joy at him for failing,” says Letterman, “was heroic.”
There aren’t many flaws in his final set, though there are sections that might be designed to scare the faint of heart. Shame, Racism, Transgender: It tackles them all, and we know that when high-caliber male comedians do that, it doesn’t always pan out. But Macdonald is kinder here than he was in his SNL heyday. Her “hey dad, I think I’m a girl” material pokes fun at the pace of change (and vitriol) around gender thinking, and she leaves trans identity on herself. There’s a routine about Down syndrome that’s a bit simplistic and another about recovered memory of trauma that’s frivolous but irresistibly fun.
All frankness is tempered, as always, by Macdonald’s folksy manner. It’s not just her smile that’s childish, it’s his air, affected but unaffected, of joyous, homely innocence in the face of a bewildering world.
There is, of course, a melancholy about the whole thing, because of the silences, because we know what came next for Macdonald. And because jokes are sometimes melancholy too. Here, the most reserved of comics (not the confessional comedy trend for him) becomes nostalgic for a time when people weren’t expected to have opinions, which in turn triggers a thoughtful reflection on why why do we allow the elections to be decided by the “I don’t know”. Here too, several sections on death: how we can’t pretend we don’t see it coming (“I made your hair white,” God tells Norma: “What do you think it’s about? I was telling you to get your affairs in order! !”); what it will be like to end our days glued to a wall, at the mercy of a family’s whim or a clumsy janitor.
Then there’s the closing riff, which trails off into an unfinished joke, the gag dissolving into a hesitant expression of his love for his mother. There’s also plenty of heart in the comedians’ discussion (he’s a wake, actually) that closes the broadcast, as Conan O’Brien, Adam Sandler and others talk about his deceased dear friend. He suggests that the outpouring of affection Macdonald’s death received may have had as much to do with his personal qualities (kindness, empathy, and loyalty) as with his work.
But this last special is worth watching. It not only shows how good Macdonald was, even without an audience, in partnership with whom (as Letterman says) the best work of him was done. He also tackles the question: what would standup look like if it were done with death breathing down the artist’s neck? You’d get a different response from the confessional comedians whose work is prominent today. In Nothing Special, you see what happens when a constitutionally private man uses comedy to both process and defy his impending mortality. This is an ensemble that, without ever mentioning Macdonald’s illness, dances suggestively over the precipice, pinching the nose of terror (in Blackadder’s coinage) and backing away with a laugh, if sometimes sad, forever playing on the lips. It’s a laugh that will last as long as audiences watch Macdonald’s comedy.
Reference-www.theguardian.com