Patton Oswalt’s 2017 Netflix special, Annihilation, is the most devastating hour of comedy I’ve ever seen. It was funny, of course, and there were some pretty good jokes about the shitshow of the Trump presidency—which, let’s be real, is the cheap meth of the current comedy world.
But the show was so effective, so visceral, because it was so much more than that—it was raw and intimate and personal and vulnerable, a laughing-through-the-tears way of coming to terms with the sudden death of his wife, Michelle McNamara, two years earlier. It landed like a gut punch; you laughed, but you also grieved. Oswalt wasn’t just a comedian on TV; he was a friend working through unimaginable grief. It was a masterpiece of pathos as profound as it was hilarious.
Oswalt’s performance Saturday night in Raleigh wasn’t like that, not really. Meymandi Concert Hall, with its massive, naked stage and high ceilings, didn’t feel intimate, even from the seventh row. (The sound was also annoyingly hit-and-miss, especially during opener Orlando Leyba’s set.) Oswalt steered clear of his personal tragedy. He also steered clear of Trump, aside from an extended riff on how easy it is to make fun of Trump.
Instead, he talked about the mundane: about nearing fifty, about taking hikes, about arguing with his new wife, about his daughter’s tantrum, about missing the Solo premiere—which had a full-size replica of the Millennium Falcon—because he had to attend his kid’s terrible art show.
For his encore, he FaceTimed his daughter and had the audience collectively tell her to eat her broccoli. That’s a pretty good encapsulation of what the show was like, which isn’t to say it was dull. Oswalt is one of the most consistently funny comedians out there, and he didn’t disappoint. His sharp-witted but good-humored jabs at a front-row millennial and his riff on the #MeToo movement and comedy—essentially, a live subtweet at Louis CK—were riotous.
Rather, the show was sweet. And that, in a weird way, was gratifying: Your friend was moving on, no longer drowning. And you were happy for him.
