No One Makes a Meltdown As Smart or Funny As Gary Gulman

Photo: Comedy Central Stand-Up via YouTube

Gary Gulman’s acclaimed HBO specials, 2019’s The Great Depresh and 2023’s Born On Third Base, may have exposed his brilliance to a wider audience, but the comedian has been a revered name among stand-ups for more than 20 years. He could have played it safe in alternative rooms, where his intellectual writing style would have found a comfortable home, but instead he pushed his heady, intricate monologues in front of tourists and first dates at the Laugh Factory and the Comedy Cellar, 24-hour party people at Dublin’s in Hollywood, and stadiums full of Dane Cook fans on the Tourgasm tour in 2005. It’s his willingness to hone ambitious writing in the wind tunnel of mainstream venues until he nails the perfect proportion of smart to funny that makes his 2013 John Oliver’s New York Stand-up Show performance, “Meltdown in Trader Joe’s,� so successful. This bit eventually ballooned in size to the 24-minute masterpiece on his 2016 special, It’s About Time, but even without its later embellishments, it’s a remarkable achievement in stand-up. Watch it now.

Gulman begins with a straightforward description of what the audience at New York’s Beacon Theatre is about to see. “I want to tell you a story of my meltdown at Trader Joe’s,� he says. Healthy laughs and a couple loud “woos� at the eight-second mark indicate they are very much onboard. He proceeds to praise Trader Joe’s egalitarian workplace to overwhelming audience approval. “It’s no doubt Communist,� he says for his first applause break at 0:21, assuring the crowd that he is 100 percent pro-Joe’s and this incident was not born from any dissatisfaction with the popular grocer. So why the meltdown? “The people who shop at Trader Joe’s, at least in New York City, they’re godless animals,� he explains to another applause break at 0:32. The crowd agrees. It’s his second ovation in under a minute, but Gulman does not stop to milk it. He talks through their clapping as if the injustice he’s relating were too egregious to pause for accolades.

Describing the shopping-cart line, Gulman walks up and down the stage, marking off the height, width, and placement of his cart and the carts around him with his hands so we can fill in the space around him in our minds. Upon discovering a breach of what he feels is the checkout-line social contract, Gulman moves his cart into the space left open by the offender. “I filled it and prepared myself for a showdown,� he says. By the one-minute mark, he has already earned two applause breaks and set up the story’s central conflict. Four of the basic questions of journalism — who, what, where, and why — have all been answered. The audience is locked in and ready for the payoff sure to come when Gulman explains the “how.�

Next, Gulman assures the audience of the villainy of his antagonist. Before the six-six former Division I football player tells a story about getting in a fight with a woman, it’s important to establish that he is still “punching up.� Gulman paints her as entitled, rude, and privileged enough to be shopping in the afternoon unburdened by any employer demanding her presence elsewhere. The audience of New Yorkers roars both in recognition that this is indeed who the culprit would be in that particular Trader Joe’s and in excitement that she may soon get her comeuppance. In a city whose inhabitants are constantly forced to make way for the one percent, it seems extra galling in a grocery store that’s supposed to be affordable.

At 1:31, Gulman puts this frustration into words. “The audacity,� he exclaims. “Nay, the temerity!� These are terms seldom heard in stand-up, where usually the goal for the act is to be understandable to everyone in the seats. Using them anyway is what separates the true comedy greats from the adequate horde. Gulman knows from countless club audiences that this stuff works and is willing to sacrifice whatever inevitable percentage of the crowd his collegiate language costs him for the increased fervency of support from those who appreciate it. The key to finding your audience in entertainment is not to make everyone like your act, but to make a particular slice of them love it. His vocabulary might come off as off-putting arrogance, except that all of his stories prove that his linguistic prowess doesn’t make him any happier than anyone else. If anything, the failures and frustrations he describes take on greater poignancy when we realize how self-aware he is. While Gulman may have a highly developed right brain, the rest of it is a ball of nerves and self-sabotage that he can’t manage, regardless of how well he can describe it. The message is clear: Envy him not.

Gulman earns his next ovation at 1:39 with the offender’s first words upon her return: “Yeah, no.� He’s done his homework, the crowd’s response suggests; this is a real type of person they have encountered themselves. At 1:53, he exhibits confidence bordering on swagger as he lays out his case in a monologue Aaron Sorkin might have written for Josh Lyman, Lieutenant Daniel Kaffee, or President Andrew Shepherd. At 2:23, as he makes his cringe-inducing Black Power salute and whining exhortation of unfairness, the unflappable enforcer of justice is gone, and a panicky shlimazel has taken his place. Gulman earns more applause at 2:34. He imitates a Trader Joe’s shopper going “Here we go!� as the chaos ensues. With three words, he captures a Manhattan archetype as familiar to the audience as the wealthy line-cutter — the jaded, inconvenienced city dweller who, with no other recourse, might as well watch the show.

At 2:55, Gulman garners another applause break as he describes his fellow shoppers switching their phones from “pic to vid.� No longer will his behavior be judged only by the people in this moment in this Trader Joe’s; it will now be visible to the satellite-connected citizenry of the globe and remain on our servers indefinitely for future generations to weigh in on. Portraying his antagonist once again at 3:05, Gulman turns his back to the crowd and looks over his shoulder to deliver her parting shot, rooting the audience in his point of view. You can hear more than a few “ohs� from individual audience members giving big “She did not� energy. As impotent, cartoonish violence ensues, Gulman delivers a play-by-play description of the inglorious battle like a breathless basketball announcer, culminating in a riff on his poor, damaged lentil chips at 3:27. By now, he’s trained the audience to applaud in sporadic bursts so they don’t miss a line. He’s not stopping the story’s momentum for anything.

“Ring the bell, I’ve been struck!� Gulman exclaims at the fight’s end, earning another applause break with his specific Trader Joe’s reference and yet another when he announces that he has “outcrazied� his opponent. The audience is both happy that justice was served and with the absurd way Gulman’s “victory� came about. The largest ovation of all arrives as Gulman brings the whole thing full circle with the perfect callback of “Yeah … no.�

The Beacon audience knows they have witnessed something special — a passionate and thoughtful performance of a meticulously crafted piece. “Meltdown at Trader Joe’s� is as tight and evocative as the best stories on the Moth or This American Life, and yet stand-up is almost never given the critical respect that such personal essays receive. There is an unfortunate yet persistent cultural bias against stand-up comedy as lowbrow tavern entertainment. But Gulman’s piece is an assessment of human behavior as clever and heartfelt as anything you’ll hear on NPR, while also satisfying the laughs per minute required by a stand-up audience. “Meltdown at Trader Joe’s� is a triumph not just of stand-up but in the wider field of spoken-word performance, and it exists only because Gulman made two equally brave choices. First, he stuck to his vision of erudite, vulnerable, and empathetic comedy despite a multitude of easier paths to laughs. He also chose to test it in front of every possible type of audience until it got the most laughs that were possible to earn without compromising that vision.