What I’m Watching: June 19, 2026

TGIF from all of us at Humorism Industries (me and my dog). Today we have six audiovisual offerings for your consideration. While you’re at it, don’t miss yesterday’s episode of the Humorism Evening Podcast, or this week’s interviews with Alec Robbins and Erik Abriss.

What Makes Alec Robbins Laugh

The “Mr. Boop” creator gets into his favorite Rory Scovel performance, the TV shows that altered his brain chemistry, what it’s like working with Tim and Eric and the other Tim and Eric, and more.

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Thank you as always for reading, and have a relaxing weekend.  

7 Piano Sketches

I loved this numinous André 3000 music video/silent film directed by Graham Mason, the filmmaker and producer behind some of my favorite works of comedy, like Reveries, The Astronauts, and Dad & Step-Dad. You’ll have to get a Mubi subscription or free trial to watch, but Mubi is well worth the money. 

Bad Therapist + New Simple Town Short

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As you know, I’m a huge fan of the comedy group Simple Town, so of course I immediately locked into member Felipe Di Poi’s new cartoon series. Each short episode features the titular bad therapist counseling a new patient; my favorite so far is the one featuring Rachel Coster as a woman desperate for a diagnosis, even if it’s “cloner’s syngrome.” Oh, and I obviously dug the new Simple Town video, too.

Emmy Blotnick | What's Her Secret?

Loved this, laughed a lot. Blotnick has an anxious quality to her delivery that I find eminently watchable; like Jo Firestone, everything she says seems dense with dramatic tension. And like Megan Gailey in the special I mentioned a few weeks ago, she finds surprising personal routes to political commentary, my favorite being a segment about her older brother, a hedge fund manager who went to jail for wire fraud and money laundering back in 2021. (“They say fake it 'til you make it, but that only works if you make it. If you fake it and don't make it, it's fraud.”) I also loved a bit towards the end about how she wakes up every morning hoping to learn that a billionaire has died, which she deftly spins into a fantasy about one specific billionaire dying. Given our current political climate, it felt genuinely risky for a comedian to go onstage and provide a vessel for that particular wish; here’s hoping it’s not in vain.

Dan Mintz | Well Rounded Entertainer

Enjoyed this, but not as much as I hoped to. I’m a fan of Dan Mintz, but for some reason his style of one-to-three-liner comedy, with nearly every joke in this special hinging on a double entendre, just isn’t hitting with me these days. I’ve been trying to figure out why I enjoy this mode of humor more from comics like Anthony Jeselnik, and I think it’s a matter of point of view: yes, Jeselnik makes frequent use of misdirection and linguistic ambiguities in a way that could get easily tire, but his jokes reflect a distinct attitude towards the world, and his sets allow that attitude to expand and refract without feeling redundant. So many of the jokes in Well Rounded Entertainer—like an early one-liner, “I went to this really hard escape room: prison”—feel like something anyone could come up with, and worse, they reach for the same low-hanging fruit over and over. An early bit observes that “Trojan” is an odd name for a condom brand; another goes, “They say you are what you eat, which makes sense, because every day I eat a worthless bag of shit.” Haha, so true, but also, I’ve been on Twitter for 15 years and go to comedy shows, so I’ve seen these jokes a dozen times. I’m all for silliness, but don’t you want to use it to say something only you can say?

That’s not to suggest the special is a complete wash. My favorite jokes were the ones that took advantage of its form—he recorded it live at Dynasty Typewriter and animated the final product—as in a crowd work segment where he roasts audience members for characteristics they obviously don’t have. I’ll admit, too, that some of his sillier one-liners still got a good laugh out of me, like “I'm probably going to hell for saying this, but I pledge eternal fealty to Satan,” and “I grew up dirt poor: we were money-rich, but we had very little dirt.” Again, though, I’m just not sure I have a taste for this type of standup anymore when social media—the public commons—is oversaturated with it. I want a special to feel special, you know?

Never Change!

A new quasi-high school comedy written by and starring John Reynolds, directed by Joe Pera Talks With You’s Marty Schousboe, edited by Whit Conway, and featuring a cast of my favorite alt-comedy luminaries, like Matt Barats, Carmen Christopher, Jo Firestone, Patti Harrison, and Gary Richardson? You bet I loved it, and I’ll be discussing it with Reynolds next week—stay tuned.