The Half Hour

Matthew Broussard knows he looks like the rich jerk trying to tear down a community center in an eighties teen movie. Rather than fight the haircut and jawline, he uses that resting rich face to defuse the room, quickly revealing that he is an anxious math major who sculpts miniature Pokémon in his spare time. The gap between his country-club exterior and his actual obsessions is where the set finds its footing.

He moves through technical absurdities, from why sexual slang is vastly preferable to anatomical terminology to his brief tenure as a college Adderall dealer. The writing relies on logic and linguistics rather than big physical theatricality. It is joke writing built around structural precision.

Filmed at the Civic Theatre in New Orleans, the performance marked the fifth season of Comedy Central’s Half Hour series, which had moved down from Boston in 2016. Broussard taped it during a productive stretch that also included a late-night appearance on Conan and a run to the finals of Jeff Ross Presents Roast Battle. Comedy Central broadcast the episode in October 2016 and issued his debut stand-up album, Pedantic, the same week.