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Cover image credit: Promotional image via Prime Video

Completely Serious

Daniel Tosh

Comedy Central · 2007 · 60 min

Daniel Tosh plays the villain in his first hour-long cable special.

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Daniel Tosh spends Completely Serious figuring out exactly how far he can push a crowd before they turn on him. Operating with the hyper-confident delivery that would soon make him a cable television fixture, he extends jokes well past the point of comfort. He plays the villain on purpose, leaning into awful premises—like defending a kidney punch to a fictional pregnant girlfriend—just to hear the room gasp. It is a calculated exercise in tension, delivered by a guy who knows exactly where the line is and chooses to step over it.

Filmed at the OC Pavilion in Santa Ana, California, the performance served as Tosh’s first hour-long special for Comedy Central. Arriving two years before the launch of Tosh.0, the 2007 set captures a road comic cementing his brand of misanthropic stage work. His material drifts from the mechanics of the 2000 election to taking completely unwarranted shots at Tulsa, Oklahoma, laying the groundwork for the internet-troll persona that would soon define his career.

The set list

2 bits

  1. Money doesn't buy happiness

    Rebuts the saying by pointing out that money buys a WaveRunner, questioning if anyone has ever seen a sad person on a WaveRunner

  2. Inability to stab someone

    Reasons that he could never stab anyone because he struggles even to puncture a Capri Sun juice pouch

How it plays

Tone
Sarcastic, surreal, biting, and unfiltered with raunchy and envelope-pushing humor
On stage
Smarmy, exceedingly self-deprecating comic in the mold of Kevin Nealon, characterized by a dry, occasionally biting, and casual demeanor
Pace
Tall, rangy performer who keeps the show moving with a very casual, non-traditional stand-up cadence
About
observational humor, wealth and happiness, violence and ineptitude, relationships and sex, pop culture and references

What the critics said

Reviewed by DVD Talk as a well-packaged, handsomely mounted showcase for a mid-level comic that is sporadically amusing, though Tosh's smarmy, self-deprecating style and narration of the obvious can wear thin

Summed up from reviews, articles and listings. Sources: themoviedb.org, imdb.com, m.tviv.org, en.wikipedia.org, dvdtalk.com, thesloppycopy.com, rottentomatoes.com, popentertainment.com.

Details

Released
Taped
2006, OC Pavilion, Santa Ana
Runtime
60 min
Where
Comedy Central
Director
Manny Rodriguez
Topics
Before
True Stories I Made Up (2005)
After
Happy Thoughts (2011)

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