Make 'Em Laugh: Wyatt Cenac's "Comedy Person"

The track record of comedians who rise to popularity by being a correspondent on The Daily Show doesn’t necessarily instill one with confidence that they’ll be just as funny when doing stand-up. There’s promise, sure, but more correspondents have faded into obscurity instead of becoming comedy powerhouses. Let’s all hope Wyatt Cenac becomes one of the exceptions to that trend, because if his album Comedy Person is any indication of his comedy chops this man deserves success. With just the right combination of storytelling, absurdity, and cultural critique, Cenac might be one of the funniest newcomers out there.

Wyatt Cenac avoids what so many aspiring comedians seem destined to do: rehashing worn out material. It’s not forbidden to tackle familiar topics, but the joke needs add something new, it can’t just be louder, cruder, or faster. Yet, his material never feels entirely out there or obtuse, but rather it’s much more contemporary with topics that you just couldn’t have covered in the past even as it borrows elements from areas that you could. For example, in going after the intelligentsia disdain for television he talks about the ludicrous counterpoints that have been adopted to make watching television a shameful activity. It’s a ridiculous notion and he makes plenty of jabs at the hypocritical practices that have arisen with the advent of the internet all while throwing in plenty of tangential jokes.

Think of his style of comedy as being in the style of Family Guy, with a basic, loose point at the end of a segment with a whole bunch of semi-related jokes on the way. Except his comedy is smart, really smart by comparison to Family Guy. If you were a flight attendant and Rosa Parks mistakenly sat in First Class with a Coach ticket, would you have the nerve to tell her to move back? No, you wouldn’t, and she knows it. When is it appropriate to go to Medieval Times? When you’re eleven and it’s your birthday party – and only then. He asks these questions, and he offers up some truly funny answers, but to get there he often goes through hysterical segues.

What sets Cenac apart from his fellow comedians is that his comedy is based not in impressions of Christopher Walken or repeating the punchline loudly, multiple times or making up hip contractions of words or ending them with –ish, but rather on unfortunate misinterpretations or subjective logic. Yeah, he makes fun of the KKK, but only for the sake of drawing attention to poor publicity campaigns or racist pastry stores. And sure, he’ll talk about the inequality that exists via the conflict over civil rights (the fight for which neither seals nor panthers aided) but only so he can talk about how we treat Martin Luther King Jr. Day – and that point probably doesn’t end the way you think.

But then again, few of his jokes do, because when he combines time travel, cat videos, dog shows, and Mr. T into an unending barrage of jokes, it’s hard to know exactly what point Cenac is trying to make until he springs it on you. This is what good stand-up comedy should strive for: enjoyably unpredictable. I’m pretty sure a major criterion for punchlines involves not knowing how it’s going to end.