Until 2020, I watched a lot of stand-up comedy. I guess my introduction to the genre was through Seinfeld. After that, I actively sought out old videos of Eddie Murphy, Chris Rock, Jim Carrey, George Carlin, and all the other comedians who laid the groundwork for this profession. And I followed newcomers, especially from India, because it was so interesting to get fresh, funny perspectives on things I encountered in my daily life. But then the pandemic hit, gigs were canceled, and all those Zoom sessions were no longer effective.
Then Bo Burnham released Inside and changed everything. Collaborative work no longer seemed funny to me. Observations about urinals and, I don't know, sliced bread didn't do it for me. Jokes about the transgender community and sexist humor, which initially didn't strike me as funny, felt even crasser. Burnham had set the bar so high, and I slowly began to realize that it was impossible for anyone to come close to him, let alone surpass him. That was until I saw Netflix's Bad Thoughts.
Creator: Tom Segura
Stars: Tom Segura, Robert Iler, Arturo Castro
Tom Segura's Bad Thoughts doesn't have a proper plot. It's a series of vignettes, some told in a serialized format, while others aren't. So I'm going to go through each narrative and talk about them. The first, where Segura plays Agent Six and Shea Wigham plays his contact, feels like a mix of The Killer and Casino Royale (the guy with the eye patch looks a lot like Richard Sammel's Adolph Gettler). But instead of being a truly competitive spy, Six is simply pathetic, and in his final moments, he cracks a bunch of poop and sex jokes. I know the comedy establishment makes fun of that, but the absurdity of the situation, coupled with the high production value, and the fact that Wigham is part of the Mission: Impossible franchise and is now in this, moved me.
The parody of Oscar-contenders, with Dan Stevens playing Fletcher, the manager of a nursing home, and Segura playing Massimo, who revitalizes the elderly by having sex with them, is hilarious. The effort put into giving it that signature "A24" touch is colossal. I don't know if that's the intention of the short, but it feels like a dig at those who have elevated that distributor to deity status. It's true that A24 wasn't an overnight success. It took them a while to catch on, and they deserve the recognition they've received for creating original films and making them accessible to audiences. However, these days they're slapping their logo on the most unnecessarily weird stories in the hopes that people will absorb them; that's not happening, and this segment feels like a kind of wake-up call for them. Or maybe I'm overthinking it, and it's just an overly long but well-produced sex joke.
The best short of all, in my opinion, is the one about the rivalry between Evan and Cyrus, the IT guy. Their conflict arises because, during a board meeting, Cyrus appears to be using the VR headset to digitally fornicate. But whenever Evan points this out to the rest of the room, Cyrus justifies his understandably strange actions by simply saying that's his process for troubleshooting server issues. To get back at Cyrus, Evan delivers Cheryl's birthday cake while he's busy with his work. This infuriates Cyrus so much that he creates a VR game where people can take on the roles of invading aliens and do all sorts of weird things to a digital version of Evan. I won't give away the rest because it's something you have to witness with your own eyes, but Segura and his team have probably outdone Black Mirror with this story. Sure, it's incredibly absurd and gross, and yet it still manages to address everything from the pettiness of office politics to the misuse of technology to violate private rights. Furthermore, Robert Iler's performance is amazing.
The Steven Seagal segment is simply a reminder that this guy was briefly one of the biggest action stars in Hollywood. Then, somewhere along the way, he decided to let it go, sexually harassed his coworkers, and trash-talked them. Segura's version of Seagal mentioning Tom Cruise twice to mock him for doing his own stunts is particularly funny because Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning is out this week. That said, it was news to me that Seagal was Russia's special envoy to the U.S. because he vehemently supported Vladimir Putin's decision to annex Crimea and invade Ukraine. To be honest, anything Segura and his writing and directing team concoct can be dismissed as ludicrous, but it's nice that all these scenarios are fictional. The Seagal-Russia thing happened in real life, and it's crazier than any of the accounts in Bad Thoughts, simply because it was done and publicly celebrated. You can shame Segura and his crew for being disgusting, but at least they're not as disgusting as a bunch of warmongers.
Rex Henley's short isn't that funny. The premise of a failed country musician who kidnaps people and forces them to live in harsh circumstances so he can write songs about his misery is sound. And the final revelation that Henley murdered 3,428 fans to make a hit album, but was never held accountable, cracked me up. The acting, production design, costume design, and the theme of ambition driving one to extremes were all good. But I don't think it needed to be stretched out into two episodes, as it lost a bit of impact by the end. Compared to that, the school play cracked me up. Why? Well, it's always funny to watch kids make some of the most inappropriate jokes in the world. This excerpt can be interpreted as the sitcom's way of highlighting that, sometimes (or perhaps most of the time), grandparents can be a bad influence on their grandchildren, and that's why parents should distance themselves. However, from my perspective, I think this segment shows that what was once old (and considered retrograde) is becoming new again. Racism, intolerance, and any other discriminatory practice in the United States were once dismissed as reprehensible. That said, younger generations who think it's cool to be "anti-woke" (whatever that means) echo the values of generations who should be ashamed of themselves for promoting prejudice in the name of patriotism.
The black-and-white segment in France, with Malin Barr playing Katie and Segura as Joseph, in addition to Brigitte, has to be a parody of Malignant. Who is Brigitte? Brigitte is the sentient tumor growing on Katie's back. The premise is that Katie is the woman of Joseph's dreams, but to get to her, Joseph has to satiate Brigitte's carnal desires. And things get as gross as you can imagine. But, yeah, that James Wan movie is one of my favorite horror films of all time, and I'm so happy to see a parody of it in real life.
There was a time when we had the Scary Movie franchise to do exactly this. The creators of that film series used to compile references from every popular horror movie and present them in the grossest way imaginable. Hell, I only learned about the Scream franchise because of Scary Movie. Now we have to rely on a Tom Segura comedy special to do the same thing? Well, I'll accept that, but it's also sad that there's no room for parody films because of copyright issues and such. I don't know how Segura and his team managed to circumvent all the loopholes, but I'm glad they did, because otherwise, how would we have gotten this grotesque masterpiece? Segura should take home all the awards for playing Joseph and Brigitte.
The "Last Wish" segment is funny in theory, as Sarah, a woman with cancer, wants Barry, the Sandwich Guy, to rearrange her insides while her husband, Carl, has to wait outside the hospital room. But the script reads like an amalgamation of all the "thirst tweets" celebrities read on BuzzFeed or The Graham Norton Show. It's okay, but I don't find it that funny. Luckily, it's followed by a brilliant segment, which is probably every comedian's nightmare: real-life people confronting you about the jokes you told onstage. Again, I won't go into detail because it would spoil the fun of seeing it in person, but I think Segura and his team have done a splendid job of demonstrating why it's difficult to separate the art from the artist in stand-up comedy.
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