Y'all Wanna Hear Something Crazy?
Netflix · 2022 · 55 min
An unsentimental, blunt look at a very chaotic life.
Ms. Pat treats a childhood of extreme deprivation and street-level survival like a series of municipal administrative errors she had to laugh her way through. She is not on stage looking for sympathy for her past as a teenage crack dealer or her time in juvenile detention; instead, she points out the absurdities of her mother getting her baptized at every church in Atlanta just to collect the cash gifts. Filmed at the Atlanta Comedy Theater in her hometown and released on Netflix in February 2022, this set arrived while her BET+ sitcom, The Ms. Pat Show, was gaining critical momentum. Directed by Robert Townsend and executive produced by Wanda Sykes, the hour serves as a live-action companion to the biographical details she laid out in her 2017 memoir, Rabbit. She transitions easily into the smaller annoyances of her current middle-class life, from the modern trend of lip fillers to her daughter coming out. But she remains at her sharpest when looking backward, detailing the terrible food options in juvenile detention and her efforts to help her disabled uncle find a sex worker with a completely unsentimental delivery. When she pushes into touchy territory, she does so with a stubborn insistence that she is simply describing her world exactly how she experienced it.
The set list
-
Growing up in extreme poverty in Atlanta
Recounts living in a home using the chimney for heat/power, eating better in juvenile detention than at home, and licking the TV screen during fast-food commercials.
-
Repeated church baptisms for money
Details how her mother forced her to get baptized dozens of times at local churches to take advantage of charity handouts.
-
Preparing Uncle Cecil for encounters with sex workers
Recalls childhood memories of helping her uncle get ready for visits with prostitutes due to his physical and mental handicaps.
-
Harriet Tubman's appearance
Acknowledges audience discomfort while arguing with blunt honesty that the historical trailblazer was not physically attractive.
-
Emotional support animals
Expresses confusion over modern pampering of pets compared to the past when dogs were simply tied to trees in yards.
-
The closer (spoiler). Show it
Teen pregnancy and having a gay daughter
Reflects on having her first baby at 14 and later learning to confront her own upbringing to fully accept and support her daughter coming out as a lesbian.
How it plays
- Tone
- Raw, raunchy, blue, and edgy, yet warm and healing.
- On stage
- Fearless, unfiltered, take-no-prisoners truth-teller who embraces her flaws, misgivings, and personal trauma with humor and honesty.
- Pace
- Boisterous and rhythmic, balancing a rapid barrage of jokes with deliberate pauses learned from Townsend to let the crowd breathe.
- About
- poverty in 1980s Atlanta, juvenile detention and incarceration, motherhood and parenting, pet lovers and emotional support animals, family dynamics and disabilities, sexuality and acceptance
What the critics said
Universally recommended as a refreshing, wholly original hour of stand-up; critics commended her fearless, uninhibited storytelling, comparing her honest familial perspective to Roseanne Barr and Richard Pryor.
In the room: Energetic and boisterous, with moments of shocked hesitation that Pat openly challenged and won over.
Backstory
Mined her past growing up poor and Black in Atlanta during the 1980s Reagan era, including teenage pregnancy, selling drugs, being shot, and serving time in jail; prepared and filmed amid venue disruptions during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Details
- Released
- Taped
- 2021, Atlanta Comedy Theater
- Runtime
- 55 min
- Where
- Netflix
- Director
- Robert Townsend
- Topics
- Before
- Rabbit (2017)
More from Ms. Pat
-
Rabbit
800 Pound Gorilla · Album
If you liked this
-
Wyatt Feegrado De-Assimilate
YouTube
-
Jim Jefferies Alcoholocaust
Comedy Central
-
Christina Pazsitzky Mom Genes
Netflix