‘The Standups’ Returns To Netflix For Season 2

Perhaps not since Rodney Dangerfield has someone been as confidently self-deprecating as Joe List. List doesn’t have a catchphrase, because he earns your respect and keeps it. Despite getting bullied or mocked or made to feel self-conscious about himself for most of his life, List has learned to turn that into a strength. There’s body shaming now? He jokes: “When I was young we called it telling a person what they looked like to their face.” And people still tell List. From middle school to the gym, from Starbucks to Bloomingdale’s. Baristas to moisturizer salesmen. He may get pushed around or put down. But he won’t stand for it. He’ll do stand-up for it. List proves the best revenge to bullying is taking ownership, having the last laugh, the first laugh, and all the laughs in between.

Kyle Kinane is my spirit animal. He opens his half-hour with a bit on mass shootings, people! “You’re probably thinking, Kyle, by the time this airs, what if there’s no mass shooting, and the joke won’t be relevant? This is America. Such a sad f—ing thing to laugh at, but boy, do I like digging a hole for myself!” He’s skilled enough to get out of any hole, immediately making you laugh at the scenario of blood transfusions in Las Vegas, or picturing the news as “an ex-girlfriend made of McRibs.” We should know better. If you didn’t know better, you might think he’s a drunken hillbilly. But Kinane opens his mouth and hilarious enlightenment spews forth. He’s that character in a movie you tend to overlook until the climactic moment when he provides the answers everyone needed. If we need to live in a world where the Ku Klux Klan is still a thing, and wonder why God is seemingly letting this all happen, then Kinane will clue us in on how to make sense of it all. Without ever seeming condescending.

Gina Yashere’s mother emigrated from Nigeria to England. But Gina herself prefers “good old-fashioned American racism” to Britain’s subtle displays of discrimination. Especially now. “I am four out of six things that Trump hates: Black, female, immigrant, gay,” she says. Then again, she found that in her first gigs in Alabama, she treated Southerners with the same level of naive disbelief, like how white people react when they first visit Africa. You may have watched some of Yashere’s current act on Seeso, but I’ve crunched the numbers and you didn’t. Nobody watched Seeso. That’s why it’s no longer here (RIP). Yashere brings an outsider’s perspective to Halloween, high school proms, and New York City. At several points, she stops to sing what she wishes was our national anthem: “America…f— yeah!” Has she seen Team America: World Police? She’s not telling!

Rachel Feinstein wants to escape her parents, but their embarrassing behaviors both online and in real life, keep reminding her of her roots. How does she deal with them, and with life? By unleashing all of their voices, otherwise kept stuck in her head. From Feinstein’s “aggressively liberal” mother, to the heckler and counter-heckler she encountered in Alabama (Feinstein is the second stand-up in this six-pack to reference gigs in Alabama. Roll Tide?), to the old Bengali woman on a bus counseling her after a break-up, to the spin class teacher with overly inspirational messages.

Brent Morin is ready for his next audition. The former co-star of NBC’s Undateable, Morin is self-aware enough to acknowledge that even though he feels great onstage, he expects he’ll look goofy on whatever images Netflix uses for the banners and billboards to promote this special. Morin’s act is all about the act out, creating situational premises from his life and re-enacting what happened. Letting us know how he attempts to look cool, but from everyone else’s perspective, appears to be just “a s—y prince.”Morin is the leading man who can be straight man and the butt of his own joke. That’s on full display when he tells of how the idea of a quest led him far astray after a fight with his now ex-girlfriend on the first day of a 10-day vacation to New York City.

Aparna Nancherla’s anxiety and depression finally matches the time we live in. Hooray? “You know you’re living in a weird period in history when you go to therapy and your therapist goes, ‘Do you want to go first, or should I?’” After about 10 minutes on how she’s equipped to handle whatever comes her way these days, the bulk of her episode is devoted to a PowerPoint presentation, which does enhance her arguments about necessary emoji reforms, as well as how not to hit on her on a dating app. Her online profile may describe her as “Introvert, at times, violently quiet.” But her onstage presence is always charming and winning. She’s just what we need now.

Watch The Standups: Season 2 on Netflix