If you think rich people conferencing in from their second or third home is a bit unrelatable, a home-made version of Saturday Night Live or other late-night programs is not the balm you need to soothe your wounds from the chapping winds of reality. Instead, I recommend Chris Gethard Presents.
Chris Gethard Presents is hosted on public access TV, and the rotating cast is much more diverse than, say, Jimmy (Kimmel), or Jimmy (Fallon), or Steve (Colbert), or James (Jim) Corden. And lucky for you, the show is also available on YouTube. In every episode, Gethard hands the reins to another comic, who formats the show in their own style. What does that mean for you? If you like one episode, there is no guarantee you’ll like another. But that’s a real loser way of looking at it. It also means if you don’t like one episode, you might like the next one! Try to stay positive.
Videos by VICE
This show is a great rabbit hole to go down and an accessible way to look at New York’s up-and-coming comedy scene. If you like a comedian you see, you can take a detour from the show to dive into their other work. For example, Carmen Christopher, who’s done multiple Chris Gethard Presents episodes (and also did a VICE News spoof) has a bunch of funny videos on Twitter where he is yelling on the subway and a short film called “I’m Killing It!!!” that I also recommend, and also opens with him yelling on the subway. It’s funny, and it reminds me of the subway, which I used to take.
For me, a standout of Chris Gethard Presents is Martin Urbano’s multi-episode spoof of Masterclass, in which he pretends to be a real piece of garbage and Carlos Mencia plagiarist. I retract my endorsement if either of those things turn out to be true. I’m not alone in appreciating Urbano’s comedy: Will Smith agrees as well, apparently. Urbano is featured in “This Joka,” hosted by Smith on the snackable content platform, Quibi, as part of a collaboration between Jada-Pinkett Smith’s studio and Top Golf.
The fanbase for Chris Gethard’s show is unparalleled in its positivity. So much so, when I described it as “extremely—almost obscenely—positive” in a previous VICE piece, they started making memes with this quote, which I saw in their Discord server. It was like the opposite of being in a bathroom stall while the mean girls in your high school smoked cigarettes and talked shit about you, not realizing you were there.
Chris Gethard Presents is available on Youtube.
