I’ve spent a LOT of the pandemic digging around YouTube, looking for ANYTHING to push the serotonin levels up. That’s when I uncovered Jena Friedman’s YouTube channel. Insomnia + depression + anxiety are all great for political satire, and I really fell head over heels for what she was doing. Little did I know that she was a writer on The Daily Show, but it all kind of made sense after that. In another depressed fit, I ended up preordering her book Not Funny, and despite not feeling depressed when I read it, I still enjoyed it. So, of course, when SF Sketchfest presented me with the opportunity to see her live, I figured it was something I needed to do.
Brittany Carney’s first words with the crowd were confessing that she just flew in from New York and immediately went to the stage. Before seeing Carney, I thought there were only two ways this could go- either the performer shakes it off and kills it, or it pulls the performer down, and you end up with a lackluster, low-energy set. Brittany Carney proved to me that there was, in fact, a third option- leveraging the drain of flying and using it to punctuate the jokes. She was clearly exhausted and all the funnier BECAUSE OF IT. Punchlines rolled off her tongue and hit you like 15 seconds later because of how dry she was! There was a long, extended bit towards the end of the set about cos-playing Santa Claus with your sexual partner (Claus Play) that took so many twists and turns and hit different people in the crowd in waves that it felt like a laughter roller coaster. Brittany Carney blew my mind. That was a real, genuine talent on stage.
Jena Friedman came onstage clutching several crumpled pieces of paper and confessed that this show was a “work in progress” and would be referencing the sheets frequently, and there would definitely be jokes that get cut later. It felt good to see actual paper instead of a cell phone that the comedian referenced throughout the show.
Friedman, much like Carney, was full of nervous energy. But Jena carried the energy much differently- she used the nerves to make herself bigger on stage, moving a lot. It was very Robin Williams in many ways. The first portion of her set was pretty heavily focused on parenting material, which is fairly reasonable since this is her first visit to the Bay since becoming a parent. The material was solid and enjoyable. Jokes effortlessly rolled off her tongue, and even the material that she said she was going to “cut from her hour-long specials.” The vast majority of the set was just solid, professional humor.
Then she decided to bring up the Israel / Palestine conflict.
The subject isn’t an easy one for pretty much anyone to tackle. But an all-ages comedy show on a weeknight in the Bay Area might be the hardest place to really host the subject. And a gag where she replaced “Israel” with “Anal” could’ve been great, especially when coming from one of the brightest political comics of our day. But everything kinda came crashing down when a self-described “15-year-old Jewish girl” started calling out Friedman on her approach. Friedman did really well at first, attempting to bring the audience member into a discussion on Zionism, the history of the term, and how it’s origins (which predate Israel) were based in providing safety for all.
But the heckler kept pushing her, and it threw Friedman off. Her eventual aim seemed to be to present the case that the right is leveraging Gaza to divide the left in order to cause chaos and assert power. She did directly call Netanyahu a fascist. But her stance may have been too neutral for that particular audience member, and they did eventually make a big show of leaving. And was hard to get back on track. The audience was now pretty squarely divided, with a smattering of hecklers now speaking up, including a lot of people (fairly) speaking up against Biden’s responses to the conflict after a call to vote for Biden in November (which y’all should DEFINITELY do, despite the worst war crimes in history happening right now being perpetrated by one of our allies).
She was able to move on and eventually close with a lovely and endearing bit about her mother, who passed away fairly recently. It was still one of the best stand-up sets I’ve seen in a while. Her hour-long set felt like it was 15 minutes long, which is a great sign.
