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Brick Wall Comedy

My Weakness Is Strong

Patton Oswalt

Comedy Central · 2009 · 64 min

A verbose cynic adjusts to marriage, fatherhood, and Hollywood orgies.

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Patton Oswalt spent his early career as the angry nerd of alternative comedy, but by 2009 he was married, expecting his first child, and fresh off voicing a beloved cartoon rat. My Weakness Is Strong is the sound of a cynic trying to figure out what to do with a good mood. He hasn’t completely softened. The hour’s strongest stretch treats his clinical depression as an eager dog that perks up whenever he skips his Prozac, eventually begging to watch The Princess Bride eleven times in a row.

Filmed at the Lisner Auditorium at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., the set captures a working comic transitioning into an elder statesman. Hot off the success of the indie film Big Fan, Oswalt builds a precise act out of aging, backyard rodents, and the social contracts required to politely exit a Hollywood Hills orgy. The material premiered on Comedy Central and earned him his first Grammy nomination for best comedy album.

The set list

5 bits

  1. Sky Cake

    Explains religion as a concept invented by weak primitive men to keep the strong from killing them by promising sky cake in the afterlife, highlighting how people absurdly kill each other over minor theological variations like sky cookies.

  2. The Hollywood Hills Fucksquatch

    Describes stumbling into the morning-after scene of an aborted Craigslist orgy while house-hunting, watching a teenager flee into the forest foliage wearing girls' Juicy sweatpants backwards.

  3. Obama and Time Travel

    Marvels that he would only need to travel ten years back in time to blow his younger self's mind with the news that America elected a Black president with the middle name of a dictator.

  4. Text messaging auto-complete

    Reflects on the perils of phone predictive text after accidentally responding to his wife's 'I love you' with his most frequently used sentence starter, 'I hate'.

  5. Grocery robots and meth cashiers

    Examines automated self-checkout technology in grocery stores and connects it to the downward spiral of a cashier's life.

How it plays

Tone
Acerbic, bemused, darkly sarcastic, and profane.
On stage
An articulate, misanthropic geek balancing bitter, aggravated disappointment in society and himself with moments of giddy enthusiasm and nerdy bewilderment.
Pace
Rhythmically delivered, finely tuned linguistic absurdity balancing sharp rants with conversational observations.
About
Impending fatherhood and childbirth, Substance use and sobriety, Religion and morality, Politics and the Obama presidency, Mundane modern life and aging

What the critics said

Critically acclaimed; reviewers praised Oswalt for maintaining his razor-sharp observational wit, verbal dexterity, and bite even as his subject matter expanded into mature domestic territory like impending fatherhood.

Summed up from reviews, articles and listings. Sources: amazon.com, tv.apple.com, wyld.wyldcatalog.org, thetvdb.com, pitchfork.com, underthegunreview.net, allmusic.com, workingclassgeek.blogspot.com, en.wikipedia.org, imdb.com.

Backstory

Oswalt's impending fatherhood, marriage, and decision to cut down on drinking and drugs, set against the contemporary political backdrop of the recent election of Barack Obama.

Details

Released
Taped
Lisner Auditorium, Washington
Runtime
64 min
Where
Comedy Central
Director
Jason Woliner
Honors
Rated 9.5/10 by Under the Gun Review
Topics
Before
Werewolves and Lollipops (2007)
After
Finest Hour (2011)

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