‘Nate Bargatze: The Tennessee Kid’ On Netflix Updates Us On Jokes From His Previous Specials

Nate Bargatze turned 40 on Monday, but he’s still The Tennessee Kid at heart.

Jimmy Fallon’s favorite stand-up — since touring with Fallon in 2013, Bargatze has performed on his Late Night plus another seven times on The Tonight Show — Bargatze has an all-American appeal. After moving to New York City for his comedy career, Bargatze and his wife returned to Tennessee so they could raise their first child in Nashville.

His daughter, now 6, introduced him onstage for his first full hour on Netflix.

Most comedians think they need to stay in NYC or Los Angeles to get ahead in show business, but Bargatze’s career never lost a step by returning to his roots. In addition to his many round-trips to 30 Rock to film Tonight Show spots, he recorded an hour for Comedy Central which aired in 2015, and two different sets for Netflix in 2017 (a half-hour for The Standups collection, and a shorter set for Brad Paisley’s Comedy Rodeo).

And as my Decider colleague Brett White has already testified, Bargatze has remained true to those Old Hickory roots, too.

Nate, short for Nathan, which itself is short for Nathaniel, as we learn in this hour, also informs audiences who aren’t caught up with Bargatze’s bio that his father still works as a professional magician, which may or may not represent a step up from his dad’s previous career in clowning. As a young child, Nate saw his father drive back home with The Easter Bunny in the passenger seat of their car. “That’s the first thing that I remember, to my life. If you want to know how you get into comedy, that’s a pretty good nudge?”

However, whatever forces pushed Nate Bargatze into performing stand-up, we’re all the better for it.

Even if, and perhaps precisely because, as Bargatze will remind us, he’s not the brightest bulb. He second-guesses himself a lot. Which holds the key to his comedic insight. By not taking a situation at face value, he digs into his psyche, wrestles with his lack of background knowledge and comes out the other side with jewel after laugh-inducing jewel.

Playing dumb enjoys a lengthy tradition in comedy. But Bargatze’s never plays the fool. His “not smart” observations, as he himself describes them, belie his true comedic genius. He’s not naive. And he never condescends. When he recounts his cousin Tuesday’s “a real redneck affair” of a wedding in Kentucky, it’s done so matter-of-factly because his deft touch and skills as a storyteller require no embellishments. The paranoia of wondering if he’s always in the wrong makes him comedically right, no matter whether he’s in the right in any personal interaction, from an attempt to reconcile ID discrepancies with an airline employee or an argument with his wife of 12 years.

Bargatze’s humor also allows for some creatively silly flourishes, such as giving the family dog emotions and imaginary dialogue for each of the scenarios he nostalgically recounts.

And there’s a recurring “but guys, in all seriousness” phrase that may not become catchphrase-worthy, but nevertheless could go on for even longer than it does as he jokes about how flummoxed the concept of global warming makes him for a potential topic of conversation.

He’s also confident enough in his growing stature as a stand-up to reference his previous Netflix specials for his closing bit, a series of callbacks updating jokes from those earlier performances. Bargatze offers a qualifier first: “If you haven’t seen it. You could pause it right now and go watch it. But you might be like, ‘I can’t handle really much more of you.'”

No need to worry. Not only can you handle it. You’ll probably want to go back and watch it all over again, either way.

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 Nate Bargatze: The Tennessee Kid on Netflix