The Half Hour

Brooks Wheelan treats childhood bad decisions as cautionary tales that nobody asked for. He recounts dipping himself into his brothers’ Scope bottle as petty revenge, only to discover that chemical burns are the first injury you can never explain to your mother, alongside stories of his brothers exploiting his Olympic dreams to get sodas delivered and his father introducing the family to the internet by commanding them to simply ask it. His delivery is unbothered and conversational, leaning directly into the absurd mechanics of brotherly torment. Recorded at the Royale in Boston for season four of Comedy Central’s The Half Hour, the set aired in September 2015, shortly after Wheelan parted ways with Saturday Night Live after a single season. The sketch show had struggled to fit him into cast ensembles, but this televised set operates in his natural habitat, echoing the self-deprecating Midwestern storytelling that pushed his debut album This Is Cool, Right? to the top of the comedy charts earlier that year.