It's About Time

Gary Gulman excels at stretching minor, everyday irritations into massive, detailed sagas. Filmed at the Bowery Ballroom in New York City, this hour features the comic turning grocery shopping and administrative history into hyper-specific narratives. He dedicates a massive portion of the set to a dramatic, escalating checkout confrontation at an Upper West Side Trader Joe’s, treating a minor queue dispute with the gravity of a classic tragedy.

Directed and produced by Bobcat Goldthwait, the hour marked Gulman’s 20th year in stand-up. It caught the veteran Bostonian at a pivotal career moment, arriving just before a severe depression would sideline his touring for years. The material here is tightly constructed, showing a comic willing to spend vast stretches of stage time examining the precise wording of synonyms, the laziness of buying a movie on iTunes that he already owns on DVD, and why the French design Yoplait yogurt specifically to undermine American values.

The centerpiece of the hour is an elaborate, fictionalized history of the committee assigned to standardize the postal system’s two-letter state abbreviations. Gulman acts out the bureaucratic clashes behind decisions like ‘AK’ and ‘AL’ with theatrical focus. Though the producers originally struggled to sell the filmed set, its eventual home on Netflix solidified his standing as one of the most meticulous writers working in comedy.