Stand-up Comedy Won Late Night This Week

Photo: The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon/YouTube

This was quite a week for stand-up comedy on late-night shows. What’s more, it was disproportionately a week for women in comedy — something rare, and rarer still to happen without a lot of back-patting. Three shows featured performances by stand-ups, and more featured women who’d gotten their starts in stand-up and the late-night circuit. Isabel Hagen performed on The Tonight Show, Andrea Jin was on The Late Late Show, Sandra Bernhard was a guest on Watch What Happens Live, and Chelsea Handler was on The Late Late Show. And Ariel Elias was on Jimmy Kimmel Live, which marked the show’s first stand-up performance in quite some time.

Elias got her shot to perform on television after a clip of her chugging a beer that had been thrown at her went viral. In that way, her set was closer to other times Kimmel has brought on viral normies more than it was like when Sam Kinison would go on Carson. It was gratifying to see that Elias had a late-night set ready for when something awful made her famous, a lesson for us all. But Kimmel’s show has always been more about connecting with the outré and un-famous than being a first TV credit for up-and-coming comedians.

James Corden’s likability crisis has people once again wondering what late night is even for nowadays. What function does it serve in the greater entertainment ecosystem? Extremely famous people plugging their cash-grab children’s books, sure, but there’s got to be something else. In the ’70s and ’80s, whole careers were allegedly made by one set on Carson. October 5’s WWHL featured Sandra Bernhard, someone who got her Q score up as a frequent guest of Letterman. Her rep was burnished by appearance after appearance. Who’s getting that frequent couch time today, Josh Gad? He’s Olaf, he doesn’t need it.

I worry about the next generation of celebs. The current platforms for a come-up (mostly TikTok and Instagram) prioritize being hot over being talented. That’s always been a bias, but now there are anti-uggo algorithms being employed to calcify those ways of thinking. It’s possible to come through the podcast track, like a Nicole Byer or Matt Rogers. Perform + pod + time = hosting a reality-competition show = face time with the masses. But if you’re a club comic, you have to either pivot right and make ungodly sums on Patreon or get used to featuring for the rest of your career. Sad!

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it until it happens or I die: We need more panel shows in the U.S. to create a bumper crop of talented C- and B-list celebs. We don’t have to completely ape the British model; we can reject modernity and embrace our own traditions. Bring back Drunk History, bring back I Love the ____, bring back Chelsea Lately and her panel of staff writers. Or at the very least, keep having weeks like this on late night.

Part of what made this week fun was the variety of performance styles we got from the stand-ups. Elias was very measured, taking time between each joke to reset herself internally. Andrea Jin was goading the audience, like a pro wrestler who’s ambivalent about their grandparents. And Isabel Hagen broke out a viola. It reminded me of Judy Tenuta, who died earlier this month and benefitted from the various ways to get on TV in the ’80s. There are a million ways to be funny, but it feels like there are fewer and fewer ways to be funny on TV.