It Could Be Worse

Gary Vider delivers his jokes with a patient deadpan that makes every punchline feel like a secret he is reluctantly sharing. Filmed at the Village Underground in New York City, his 2024 special It Could Be Worse leans into an understated style, where slow setups are met with structural left turns. Rather than relying on loud physicality, Vider uses silence and precise timing to pull the crowd into his quiet exasperation.

Much of the set focuses on the adjustments of early parenthood. He opens with the existential math of a fifty-thousand-dollar IVF baby, noting that because his son is in the ninety-eighth percentile for height and weight, he is entirely certain the kid belongs to someone else. He details the misery of sitting on a backless stool for eight hours of labor, and a calculation about his child’s birth in mid-2020 that would require him to politely accept a partner’s infidelity to avoid looking prejudiced.

Released on YouTube by 800 Pound Gorilla Media, the special was co-executive produced by fellow New York comic Sam Morril. It arrived during a productive stretch for Vider, who had recently launched #1 Dad, a narrative podcast documenting his childhood spent with a con man. The transition from that childhood to the domestic anxieties of adulthood provides the engine for his stage work, transforming surveillance apps and neighborhood pit bulls dressed in ties into sharp, memorable bits.