Drew Carey

He steps to the microphone looking like a substitute teacher. He wears a dark, boxy suit, a crew cut, and thick horn-rimmed glasses, and he laughs at his own jokes before finishing them. The cadence is a steady setup-punch rhythm, but the texture of a Drew Carey set is the sound of his own amusement. He will describe a miserable situation—living in a terrible apartment, getting dumped—and break into a loud, genuine snort, completely undercutting the misery of the premise.

He hasn’t needed to tell a joke on stage in decades. He went from a hit 1990s sitcom to hosting daytime television, becoming a fixture in American living rooms. But his early standup shows how to make complaining likable. He doesn’t act like an intellect handing down observations; he acts like a guy at the end of the bar who cannot believe how ridiculous his life is.

The material from his club years focuses squarely on the indignities of having no money and bad luck. He outlines the hazards of dating out of his league and the anxiety of high school reunions. The defining element is the absence of bitterness. When he talks about taking a date to a bad restaurant, he sounds delighted by the absurdity of his own poverty.

His stage look was an accident of circumstance. He started doing open mics while serving in the Marine Corps Reserve, simply walking out in his government-issued frames. He kept the glasses, using them and his Cleveland roots to build a persona of a guy who expects to lose, but intends to enjoy himself anyway.