When Chevy Chase showed up for his Comedy Central Roast in 1995, he expected a traditional Friars’-style night of lighthearted ribbing: a procession of people with whom he’d worked over the years, close friends dishing out tough-love insults with a little side wink to the camera, finishing their sets with a warm congratulatory handshake and hug. They’re supposed to be the culmination of a career in comedy, roasts are, a sort-of This-is-Your-Life-style, oral greatest hits. Chase, however, ended up not only being disappointed but walking home in despair, because instead he was treated to the new style of roast-as-hosted-by-Comedy-Central, which is basically just a revolving door of shitty, second-rate comedians they have on retainer (Greg Geraldo, Jeff Ross, Lisa Lampanelli, et al.) dishing out dispiritingly impersonal jabs that any disassociated fan with a third-grade education could come up with.
It’s super-sad, really, what Comedy Central has made of roasts. We’ve all seen commercials over the years for the totally arbitrary lineup of roastees: Flava Flav, Hugh Hefner, Pamela Anderson…really just anyone with obvious, almost cartoonish career attributes about whom lazy stand-ups can fill five minutes of material. It’s sad because—as mentioned above—roasts traditionally were supposed to be a kind of lifetime achievement award for comedians, whereas in the past twenty years or so, not only have the honorees not been comedians, they may just as well not have shown up at all.
It’s easy to figure out why this has happened. Comedy Central has, in its twenty-four-year existence, produced exactly five successful shows total (Daily Show, Colbert Report, South Park, Chapelle’s Show, and—for some reason—Reno 911!) which, with that record, you’d think they’d sink pretty hard, but the shows it has produced are not only successful but staples of modern American society, so the execs at CC have to think of other stuff to fill the remaining twenty-two hours a day. One way to do that without bleeding money is to sign long contracts with struggling comedians and throw shows at them every now and then, so you get shit like The Root of All Evil with Lewis Black, or Tough Crowd with Colin Quinn, or Shorties Watchin’ Shorties with Nick DiPaulo and Patrice O’Neill, or that insanely unfunny Tosh.0 show with that totally untalented fucking nine-year-old Daniel Tosh (or you get endless stand-up specials with e.g. that weird racist creepy ventriloquist dude Jeff Dunham). Or, CC can just combine all of the above, put these second-, third-, and fourth-rate comedians in a room with someone who hasn’t been famous in like twenty years, and call it a roast.
All of this is to say that it was a genuine surprise to find out that CC was hosting a roast of none other than Mr. James Franco, himself not only currently famous but also well-connected, allowing him to people his own roast (by all accounts, it was his idea) with comedians you’ve heard of. There was the obligatory Jeff Ross set—without question the night’s nadir, though I’ll get to that—but other than that the roasters were all-star and—get ready for this—actually funny.
For instance, Seth Rogen (!) acted as roastmaster (usually a huge role, though Rogen relegated himself to a single set at the beginning and a few intros in between) and set the tone for the night at the beginning by admitting he didn’t really want to say anything mean about anyone. That was the feeling throughout the night, people who seemed actually to not only have met each other but who shared genuine affection from their years together. Nick Kroll got in what I thought was the first great line with a dig at Seth Rogen: “Many of you might not know this, but Seth has a writing partner named Evan Goldberg. What does this guy look like that you’re the face of the operation?” And on Jonah Hill: “Jonah, a lot of people are going to make fun of your weight tonight, but not enough people are going to mention what an asshole you’ve become.” Hill, probably aware of his prima donna reputation as of late, performed his entire set under the guise of being nice while offering backhanded compliments (on Sarah Silverman: “People always say you’re hot for a comedian, but that’s unfair—you’re also hot for how old you are. You are a role model for little girls out there—every little girl dreams of being a fifty-eight year old single stand-up comedienne with no romantic prospects on the horizon!”).
With the exception of one particularly blue joke by someone named Natasha Legerro (to Bill Hader: “You’re this generation’s Phil Hartman…hopefully”—which drew some truly shocked faces from the crowd), the best jokes ended up being send-ups of the concept of the roast itself. The night was peppered with gay jokes about Franco, Indian jokes about Aziz Ansari, and Jew jokes about…well, pretty much everyone, but what made the roast pretty special (and progressive) was the fact that the best jokes were actually about how lame those kind of jokes are nowadays. Andy Samberg literally made me spit coffee out of my mouth during his set, which consisted of Samberg “roasting” everyone on stage by actually saying incredibly nice things about them (“Hey James Franco, knock knock.” “Who’s there?” “I think about you when I masturbate.”). But his best joke subverted the racism laced in that Legerro person’s preceding set: “Aziz Ansari’s parents are from India and he’s from South Carolina. Hey, what’s it like to have a unique perspective on what it means to be an American you bag of shit! Roasted!”
Ansari himself ended up taking to task pretty much any and all regressive humor for the duration of his five minutes at the mic, starting with the defense against the Indian jokes lobbed at him: “I’m glad you guys got a chance to travel back in time to 1995 for all those Indian jokes tonight—seriously, those stereotypes are so outdated. There are more Indian dudes in sitcoms than work at 7-11.” And, anticipating the barrage of gay jokes lobbed at Franco (though, truth told, there were actually mercifully few of those, again showing signs of progression): “Why so many gay jokes? Apparently, if you’re clean, well-dressed, and mildly cultured, you’re super-gay now. Is that why all of you are so aggressively fat and dirty? You think if you read one book and take a shower dicks are gonna just fly into your face?”
It was a breath of fresh air, really, punctuated by the stale set by CC Roast regular (and friend of, like, no one on stage) Jeff Ross, who immediately followed him with a bunch of hacky, moldy racist-homophobic-misogynist barbs, the kind you’re used to hearing from the roasts of the last two decades, and that would be shocking if this was maybe 1934, and that really ended up just being embarrassing since Ansari had just taken all of the air out of those kind of jokes, anticipating the laziness of the CC-contract comedian.
Here’s the point: I’m not a stand-up comedian, but I’ve watched enough of them to know that it’s super, super easy to do shock-humor and “say what everyone’s thinking” (even though fewer and fewer of us are thinking what they say anymore), because if you bomb, you can just blame people for being too PC. It’s great that CC roasted someone who we give a shit about. But it’s even better that the roasters put actual effort into their jokes, and for the first time in I can’t remember how long, I finished watching without feeling like I had to take a shower.
About Ted McLoof
Ted McLoof is a writer at Rookerville and teaches fiction at the University of Arizona. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in the Minnesota Review, Bellevue Literary Review, Gertrude, Monkeybicycle, Sonora Review, Hobart, DIAGRAM, The Associative Press, and elsewhere.He's recently been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and a Best of the Net Award. He is very cool and very handsome and he'd like to buy you a drink.