What I'm Watching: May 15, 2026

Don't miss the inaugural episode of the Humorism Evening Podcast! If I've done things right, and I think I have, it's currently available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and here.

Welcome to my new weekly feature, "What I'm Watching," a roundup of what I'm watching. Without any further ado, here's what I'm watching:

An Interview about How Much Netflix Pays Comedians

This is an interesting conversation between Luke Girgis, who produces a newsletter and podcast for entertainment executives, and Emilio Savone, the owner of New York Comedy Club and manager of various comics. It’s a wide-ranging chat about the business of running a standup club, but most interesting to me is the bit where Savone opens up about the economics of Netflix specials.

As he tells it, for most comedians below the superstar level of fame, Netflix pays $100,000 to $200,000 to license a special for two years. Comics are on the hook for their own production, which can eat up half to all of that payment. By contrast, he says, Hulu pays comics at that same level roughly $1 million per special, stipulating that they carve out a certain amount for production costs.

Savone also says that Netflix is less effective at moving ticket sales than it (supposedly) used to be, and these days YouTube is where comedy fans really live; when comics work with Netflix, it’s more often for the brand imprimatur, or because they don’t want to risk people seeing their viewership numbers if they bomb. 

Sheng Wang: Purple

I wanted to like this Netflix special more than I liked it. Sheng Wang has a pleasing Hedbergian quality to his comedy, which applies a stoner's poetic existentialism to the mundanities of daily life: eating blueberries, coaxing kitchenware out of a jammed drawer, buying a toaster. And while his observations often seem very directly inspired by Hedberg—“I’m real passionate about those antioxidants… I don’t even know what oxidants are, I just know that I’m against them”—he unwinds his premises far beyond that initial twist, taking them to unpredictable if still fairly quotidian places.

As much as I enjoyed his jokes, I felt there was a strange flatness to the special as a whole; my girlfriend noticed that he didn’t do any crowd work, and indeed I don’t think there were even any audience reaction shots. I’m not normally Mr. Crowdwork, but I do crave an element of spontaneity in comedy specials, a feeling of liveness that lets me feel like I’m participating in something, not just witnessing it. There was no such element in Purple, and I felt the special was worse off as a result. 

Megan Gailey: Live from My Driveway

I loved this hour shot outside the Los Angeles home Megan Gailey shares with her husband, the comedian CJ Toledano, and their toddler son—both of whom watched from an upstairs window, offering some of the most delightful reaction shots I’ve ever seen in a comedy special. Gailey’s comedy deftly blends the personal and the political, using her pregnancies—here she’s eight months into her second—and her experiences as a Public Woman to critique the MAGA right. The outdoor setting makes for plenty of surprises, with the full moon and a passing ambulance inspiring some of the funniest moments in the special—which isn’t a knock on Gailey’s prepared material, but a testament to her ability to be just as funny off the cuff as in her writing. Five stars.

Jack Bensinger's Peripheral

I love Jack Bensinger (Rap World, SNL) and I very much enjoyed his new CW-style short about a guy with “peripheral vision syndrome—means I can only see out of the sides of my eyes.” The video also features one of my favorite Brooklyn comedy people, Amy Zimmer (Problemista, Stress Positions), currently starring in the film Blue Heron. 

Lil Rel Howery on The Roast of Kevin Hart

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Howery: What up, what up, y'all? All right, I'm gonna say this, right? I end up catching up and watching Kevin Hart roast. Shout out to Na'im Lynn, shout out to Sheryl Underwood, shout out to Chelsea Handler, Katt, Kev. It was some funny people on there. And people gotta know roasting it is what it is, and it can go below the belt. What I am annoyed about, I'm just keeping it 100, just keeping it 100. And I wonder how I would've reacted if I was there. I couldn't attend because I've been in upstate New York shooting a movie. 

I don't understand. It's one thing to roast the people that's there. It's one thing to roast the people that may be in the audience there. Roasting somebody that number one is dead, number two that's not there, number three that the implications of why you shouldn't joke about that. Like Tony Hinchcliffe's joke about George Floyd didn't fucking make sense to me. It was no reason to bring George Floyd into this. It just was disgusting. 

And I do feel a certain way that the audience was okay booing Draymond Green every time his name was mentioned or just—so y'all could boo. We know people was booing in there. But you don't boo Tony Hinchcliffe right after that. 

I'm starting to understand. And I get it, man. And I'm okay with not being a part of a lot of this cliquey bullshit that's in comedy or in our business that some of y'all may think I'm a part of but I'm not. I hundred-percent would've booed that motherfucker and probably walked out. That's all I'm saying. Come on, y'all. 

I do think times we are too sensitive about certain things. Why we just can't agree that bringing up George Floyd and the way he did it was just fucked up and not funny and not needed? It wasn't even needed. So whatever. Congrats to Kevin Hart. But man, I ain't like that shit.

Harris Alterman on Tony Hinchcliffe

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Alterman: "The Black community is so proud of you right now. George Floyd is looking up at us all laughing so hard that he can't breathe."

Now, I don't usually express my views about comedy online because I'm afraid it will come across as whiny or preachy, but I can't take it anymore. I think what Tony Hinchcliffe is doing here, in addition to being racist, which people are already talking about, is just a shameful use of comedy as an art form. Why? Because underneath every joke is a claim, the subtext. So what is the subtext of this joke? Number one, "George Floyd is burning in hell," but the subtext underneath that claim, he's really saying, "I'm saying something offensive out loud. Isn't that crazy?" And I just think of all the things there are to say about the world, I just don't think saying something offensive for the sake of saying something offensive is interesting. It's not interesting.

And this is not an attack on edgy comedy. There are edgy comedians out there, but edginess is not the core of what they're giving us. They're using edginess, but there's something else to go with it. Also, I understand that this joke took place in the context of a roast where yes, maybe you have some more freedom to say heinous wild shit. But this joke was just a boiling point for me because Tony Hinchcliffe's comedy is like this all the time. I just think comedy is a beautiful tool and I hate seeing it being used like this.

Comedy can be used for so many amazing things. You can hear a joke that's relatable and you go, "Oh my God, I didn't know other people felt like that. " And it literally connects you to other people in humanity. Comedy can be used to call out power. You can see a sketch or a joke that makes fun of tech billionaires and you go, "Yes, those people are fucking us." I've seen comedians who literally put me in a state of childlike wonder because I can't believe that another adult human being is onstage being so silly and ridiculous. But comedy being used to be offensive for the sake of being offensive, what is the purpose of that? How does that feed our souls? What does that give us?

Last thing I want to say is to all the comedians who perform on Kill Tony, not the open micers, but the people he has on the panel, some of whom are extremely talented: I understand that you are probably going on the show because you want to raise your own profile, it helps sell tickets, but I just want you to know it comes at the cost of you are losing the respect of your peers. Some of you guys are so funny and it just makes me sad that your talents are being used to prop up Tony Hinchcliffe and his show, which I know you know is bad for the art form that we all love.

(Thank you to Humorism friend Josh for sending this my way.)

Just For Fun

Here’s rabid Islamophobe and Riyadh Comedy Festival headliner Chris Distefano arguing that hantavirus is a side effect of the Covid vaccine, and also a false flag that Pfizer and Moderna are using to start a new, deadlier pandemic:

And here’s Shane Gillis posing with his Nazi friend Nick Rochefort at the Boston Garden last week:

And here he is with Drake, whose son's livestream he just appeared in:

Finally, via alleged pedophile and Roastmaster General Jeff Ross, here's one of the stupidest and vainest ideas I’ve ever heard:

Thank you as always for reading, and please share this with anyone you think would enjoy it.