Stand-up comedian and co-author of the best selling book “He’s Just Not That Into You,” Greg Behrendt, made his return to the solo stage with a previously recorded, hour-long stand-up special, “Greg Behrendt Is Uncool”, on Comedy Central Monday night.
In his new special, Behrendt, a former consultant for the HBO show “Sex and the City”, quips about how his life has changed since becoming a relationship “expert,” having children and realizing that he was too old to rock.
Behrendt, who built his stand-up career around a sensitive hard-rocker image, has replaced his once contradictory stage persona with that of an overly estrogenized, self-depreciating, door-to-door salesman desperate to sell his audience everything he has ever created.
The special feels more like an infomercial than a stand-up act.
Gone are Behrendt’s rants about cake, Cadburry Eggs and crybaby Spiderman. Instead, the audience is left with a show in which Behrendt discusses wanting to lick Oprah’s face, having to wear glasses to view porn, being the creepy old guy at rock shows and working on a hit television show.
The odd combination of compassionate honesty, midlife neurosis and self-promotion never quite comes to fruition, leaving the viewer squirming in their seat and questioning Behrendt’s true motive for the show.
Behrendt’s act often fails to hit its mark. This has more to do with the subject matter than it does the comedian’s presentation and delivery. Behrendt appears changed, and his view on the world seems altered. Behrendt’s old acts had an underlying defiance that set the comedian apart from most stand-ups. In his new act, that defiance seems replaced with a longing to be accepted.
There are few laughs involved in Behrendt’s new act, the majority of the audience is either cheering or clapping, thus emphasizing popularity over actual humor. The few bits that do work involve Behrendt’s family members.
In the third segment of the show, Behrendt discusses how he hates getting old and that every time he feels his mind slipping he envisions himself becoming more and more like his 70-plus year-old father. The comedian then embarks on a three to five minute long monologue about a phone conversation he recently had with his father. The conversation centers around his father attempting to explain to his son that he recently rented “The Lord of the Rings” on DVD. Unfortunately, his father cannot remember the title of the film so he refers to the movie as “the one about the hippies and their keychain.”
The bit is classic Behrendt, a rant-filled conversation that is punctuated by absurdity and confusion.
Sadly, this is the only bit that Behrendt successfully pulls off, the remainder of the show is as tedious as the rest, and only offers a few more mild chuckles. (The loudest chuckles occur a few segments after the bit about his father, and involve his wife and one of her friends exposing their genitalia to one another because his wife’s friend is going to pose for Playboy and they were discussing shaving techniques.)
Behrendt closes out his show with a rock peformance of “Itsy Bitsy Spider,” performed with Black Rattle (a rock band full of grown men singing baby songs). Behrendt himself sings the lyrics to (as he states) the baby song version of “Free Bird.”
Fame does weird things to people, and it seems it has made Greg Behrendt boring. His new stand-up special demonstrates just that.
