My Girlfriend's Boyfriend
Netflix · 2013 · 76 min
A storytelling hour about romantic failures and a serious car accident.
Mike Birbiglia is a vocal commitment-phobe who builds a cohesive narrative out of romantic failures. He isn’t tossing out disconnected premises; he is constructing a single, deliberate arc that ends with him reconsidering his entire stance on marriage. The stage is set with a bed and nightstand, but he mostly relies on a solitary stool to anchor stories about awkward teenage kissing, vomiting on a carnival ride called the Scrambler, and a pitch for why stressed-out babies should be allowed to smoke on airplanes. Filmed at the Intiman Theatre in Seattle in 2013, the set captured Birbiglia establishing his signature hybrid of stand-up and theater. He had already honed the hour off-Broadway, where it won a Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Solo Show and became a New York Times critics’ pick. Following the breakout success of his previous one-man show Sleepwalk With Me, he proved his deeply personal approach to comedy was a sustainable career path, not a fluke. The performance is conversational and meticulously paced, culminating in a car accident that finally forces him to grow up.
The set list
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Middle school carnival date
Invited a crush on the Scrambler ride, only to vomit and ruin any chance of a first kiss.
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First kiss with Sondra
Flew into a panic about never having kissed anyone, finally kissing Sondra at a school dance, who later stopped returning calls because he kissed like 'a dog eating spaghetti.'
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Dating high school delinquent Amanda
Thought their opposites-attract dynamic worked until realizing he was merely a substitute while her real boyfriend was away.
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Los Angeles car crash and the police report
After being T-boned by a drunk driver, a botched police report assigned Birbiglia the fault, leading to an obsessive and alienating crusade to clear his name until Jenny brought him to his senses.
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The closer (spoiler). Show it
Believing in Jenny instead of marriage
Concluding that although he remains philosophically opposed to marriage, he chooses to believe in Jenny and relinquish the need to always be right.
How it plays
- Tone
- Touching, painfully honest, romantic, and charming.
- On stage
- Self-deprecating, gentle, and self-consciously hapless with an air of a 'little boy lost', delivering personal vulnerabilities with warmth, charm, and sincerity.
- Pace
- Laid-back, deliberate, and tightly measured, periodically punctuated by energetic physical act-outs and sudden emotional crescendos.
- About
- marriage and commitment, romantic disappointment and awkwardness, arguments and the obsession with being right, car accident and bureaucracy
What the critics said
Universally acclaimed as a poignant, masterful piece of personal narrative comedy that seamlessly blurs the line between traditional stand-up and one-man theatre.
In the room: Deeply intimate and emotionally engaged, eliciting both intense laughter and sympathetic sighs, with audience members moved to tears and live onstage proposals.
Backstory
Centers on Birbiglia's philosophical skepticism toward marriage and his romantic misadventures, culminating in his June 2007 wedding to his wife Jenny after surviving a car crash.
Details
- Released
- Taped
- Intiman Theater, Seattle
- Runtime
- 76 min
- Where
- Netflix
- Director
- Seth Barrish
- Honors
- Vulture's #1 Stand-up Special of 2013Paste's #1 Stand-Up Special of 2013The Laugh Button's Best Comedy Albums of 2013 (#1) and 5 more
- Topics
- Before
- What I Should Have Said Was Nothing (2008)
- After
- Thank God for Jokes (2017)
More from Mike Birbiglia
-
The Good Life
Netflix
-
Good One: A Show About Jokes
Peacock
-
The Old Man & The Pool
Netflix
-
The New One
Netflix
-
Thank God for Jokes
Netflix
-
What I Should Have Said Was Nothing
Comedy Central
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