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Brick Wall Comedy
Brick Wall Comedy
Promotional art for The Wall
Cover image credit: via TMDB

The Wall

George Lopez

HBO · 2017 · 59 min

George Lopez confronts the political climate and modern sensitivity in Washington.

George Lopez took the stage at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., during a highly polarized summer, and he did not play to the middle. Released live on HBO in 2017, the special is titled after Donald Trump’s proposed border wall, and Lopez wastes no time addressing the political climate. His frustration with the administration’s anti-Latino rhetoric is central to the set, manifesting in pointed commentary about the contradictions of immigration policies and the strange reality of how documented the undocumented actually are.

Yet, despite the politically charged title and venue, much of the hour is a return to his standard playbook. Lopez spends significant time contrasting what he views as tough, traditional Latino upbringings with the perceived fragility of modern American culture. He takes aim at gluten-free diets, peanut allergies, and therapy dogs for anxiety, comparing them to the harsher style of parenting he grew up with.

Filmed at the Kennedy Center’s Concert Hall, the special marked Lopez’s fourth live hour for HBO. At the time of its release, he was balancing his TV Land sitcom, Lopez, with the Comedy Get Down arena tour. While his core fan base welcomed the defiant posture of the performance, the set received mixed reviews. Some critics and viewers felt the transition from political outrage to complaints about modern parenting felt disjointed, and a few of his riffs on allergies and childhood anxiety drew backlash from audiences accustomed to a lighter touch.

The set list

4 bits

  1. Donald Trump's border wall

    Mocking Trump's insistence on the wall and declaring that Mexicans will 'get over it', while highlighting the irony of building a wall without Latino labor.

  2. Telling immigrants to go back to where they came from

    Arguing that the word 'minority' should be obsolete under the Constitution and pointing out that if everyone had to go back to their ancestral origins, traffic and crime would decrease.

  3. Picking tomatoes as a teenager in Sacramento

    Recalling resisting his elders' push to do field work and later realizing how thoroughly American he was when visiting Mexico, comparing himself to a zoo lion released into the wild.

  4. Modern coddled children and food allergies

    Contrasting how strictly previous generations of Latino parents disciplined kids against today's overly sheltered youth and dietary sensitivities.

How it plays

Tone
Outspoken, profane, provocative, and topical.
On stage
Angry, defiant, politically charged, and proudly rooted in his Mexican-American identity.
Pace
Riled up and fast-moving, propelled by the immediacy of a live television broadcast.
About
Donald Trump and the proposed border wall, Immigration and immigrant contributions to America, Latino culture and habits vs. white culture, Generational parenting differences, Modern sensitivities and peanut allergies

What the critics said

Critics noted that the live format brought immediacy and timely political barbs, but reviewers also observed that much of the set reverted to his familiar cultural material and boilerplate family tropes rather than a sustained political thesis.

In the room: Energetic and predominantly Latino live theater crowd at the Kennedy Center.

Summed up from reviews, articles and listings. Sources: hbomax.com, nowtv.com, tv.apple.com, themoviedb.org, decider.com, hbowatch.com, wmot.org, rottentomatoes.com, text.npr.org, tvweek.com.

Backstory

Filmed live during Donald Trump's presidency amid intense national debate over immigration and a proposed U.S.-Mexico border wall, broadcast two days after The Washington Post published transcripts of Trump's phone call with the President of Mexico.

Details

Released
Taped
Concert Hall at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Washington
Runtime
59 min
Where
HBO
Director
Troy Miller
Topics
Before
The Wall, Live from Washington, D.C. (2017)
After
We'll Do It For Half (2020)

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