Fun
Frisky
Nostalgic
Intense
Adventurous
Choked Up
Curious
Romantic
Weird
In his debut stand-up comedy special for HBO Max, Ahir Shah dwells on how his perspective has changed on religion, relationships and his identity as a British-Indian man just trying to get by. As Shah wrote on Twitter: “It’s about uncertainty, and was appropriately filmed 14 months late on account of the world collapsing. I hope you like it.”
AHIR SHAH: DOTS: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
The Gist: Ahir Shah is just entering his 30s but has performed stand-up comedy for half of his life already, taking multiple shows to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, with his two most recent hours receiving nominations for bet show of the festival. His 2017 show, “Control,” lost out to Hannah Gadsby’s Nanette; in 2018, his show, “Duffer,” lost out to Rose Matafeo’s Horndog.
In December 2019, HBO Max initially announced filming of his newest hour, Dots, in addition to Horndog and still-unfinished orders for specials from Tracy Morgan and John Early. Despite the delay in getting Dots before an American audience, it’s not a pandemic special. Shah has kept this hour of material largely intact from how he performed it on tour two years ago, in the before times. It finds him at a personal crossroads, dealing with relationship rejection, trying to quit smoking but unable to quit vaping, and realizing why religion attempts to answer everyone’s questions about everything.
What Comedy Specials Will It Remind You Of?: Shah seems equal parts deep thinker and overthinker in this hour, and yet you can’t quite pigeonhole or categorize him alongside most American comedians who also talk about depression or mental health, or even Indian-American comedians of that type such as Aparna Nancherla, or even Indian comedians such as Vir Das. There’s just something about his particular intersectional identity that makes him unique, at least for American audiences in 2021. But as Shah himself jokes, he realizes he’s not that unique.
Memorable Jokes: A recurring theme in Shah’s hour is also perhaps Britain’s most famous motto: “Keep Calm and Carry On.”
But first, he has jokes to ingratiate himself to any audiences who haven’t heard or seen of him before now. Such as noting: “My own phone auto-corrects my name to the word ‘Shit.’” And: “I realize that I sound as though I’ve been colonized by my own voice.” Or that on vacation in Mexico with his white girlfriend, Mexicans mistook him for one of their own.
His vaping habit makes an appearance to demonstrate how difficult it is for him to kick that habit, and serves as a segue for Shah to joke about how his thinking leads to depression and how he has been on, off, and now back on antidepressants, as well as vitamin supplements. “It’s odd to do three things daily to make yourself feel how other people presumably just feel the whole time.”
Halfway through the hour, there’s a solid bit about the concept of adulting, which he has both a metaphor for (learning to swim) as well as a fiery real-life example, thanks to his family’s Hindu traditions. The latter he punctuates with a long pause between punchline and tag, as his eyes bug out a bit and dart back and forth across the theater. He’ll later go into an act-out dialogue about and with religion to illustrate how the concept (no matter the religion) lures in those who seek answers to life’s big questions.
And for anyone who questions India’s tradition of arranged marriage, Shah has a wake-up call for you kids out there on the dating apps.
Our Take: There’s a moment early in the hour where Shah realizes that as a comedian with a platform and some recognition, “I now have an amplified voice,” and those people can be counted on to share their opinions on anything, or even trickier, asked for their opinions on topics that address their entire race, ethnicity or culture.
Which also reminds him of the irony in how white people can somehow differentiate among hundreds of types of white people, yet consider all people of color to exist as one group.
As for Shah, he’s somehow comfortable or at least self-aware enough about his own discomfort and uncertainty to keep poking fun at himself about it all.
And he’s confident enough to make bold choices in his final minutes of the hour. He doesn’t ask whether to be or not to be, but instead: “How to crescendo and not simply grow up: That is the question.” That he follows that with silence, first walking offstage momentarily to retrieve the microphone stand, then a second time to step away from the mic and allow a recording of himself asking his parents for advice and wisdom, is bolder still for a comedy show finale. It’s hardly a crescendo in the literal audible sense.
But then again, it is in keeping with his nation’s motto.
Our Call: STREAM IT. There has been a dearth of quality new stand-up comedy to be seen, heard and enjoyed this summer, so if you’re looking for something new and different, Shah’s here for you.
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.
