‘Pete Holmes: Dirty Clean’ On HBO: Comfortable In His Own Skin And Yoga Pants, Too

Etiquette classes may teach you how to enunciate properly. Comedy classes may someday create a course focused just on how much joy the comedian Pete Holmes brings by over-enunciating words.

In 2013’s Nice Try, The Devil for Comedy Central, Holmes became obsessed with the name Pierce. In his first HBO comedy special, 2016’s Faces and Sounds, he found himself turned around by the phrase “edited it.” This time, he’s got Lululemon on the brain, if not also on his legs when he’s not onstage.

With his second HBO special, Dirty Clean, and the third season of his semi-autobiographical sitcom, Crashing, coming in January, Holmes is even farther removed from the character he’s playing on TV.

Sure, he remains ever the affable goof who jokes about marrying a woman with “big ol’ titties” and thus fulfilling a childhood dream. But he’s also now married, and newly into fatherhood. Everything’s going great for Pete in real life. Crashing Pete still might not know how to make ends meet or even meet the love of his life. Real Pete really does wear yoga pants, despite never going to yoga. He has found his happy place.

Some stand-ups argue that’s death to a comedian.

And yet, Holmes exudes so much joy, it’s contagious.

As a new father, he has realized why everyone warns to never shake a baby. And living in Hollywood, he stands out among his cohorts who are predominately anti-marriage and yet somehow pro-tattoo. Holmes is one of at least a few comedians in his own peer group who have proposed to their wives in a hot-air balloon and lived to joke about it. They’ve certainly convinced me not to do it.

Where Holmes really goes against the grain remains his seemingly serene philosophy, whether it’s his willingness to sit in traffic, or his belief in the afterlife, or his outlook on life itself. “Long. Slow. Straight. Good.” That’s how Holmes describes his L.A. commute, and it applies to his comedy, too.

That extra time in the driver’s seat allows him to ponder anything and everything, and then relay those questions to a much larger audience. It can be something as simple as checking if he has to pee. “What did you just do?” he wonders. “What action did you just command?”

Holmes isn’t worried about how he looks or sounds sharing his thoughts. Case in point: “Mike Pence looks like a clear gummy bear. Is that anything?”

Hoots and hollers from the crowd say yes. Yes, that is a thing. Of course, Holmes has his own theory for why the current vice president won’t allow himself to be alone with in a room with a woman not his wife. And after you hear Holmes out, he’ll set the record straight: “If you laughed at that, you’re going to love this show. You picked the right night. You picked the right night.”

Sean L. McCarthy works the comedy beat for his own digital newspaper, The Comic’s Comic; before that, for actual newspapers. Based in NYC but will travel anywhere for the scoop: Ice cream or news. He also tweets @thecomicscomic and podcasts half-hour episodes with comedians revealing origin stories: The Comic’s Comic Presents Last Things First.

Watch Pete Holmes: Dirty Clean on HBO NOW