Noted Expert

Michael Ian Black has spent decades perfecting a stage persona built entirely on smug, self-aware smarm. He treats the stage as a platform for theatrical self-satisfaction, turning cheap wordplay into a recurring performance. When he introduces the topic of abortion as a ‘very fertile topic for comedy,’ he does not just deliver the pun; he bows, revels in the audience’s mixed reaction, and then repeats the entire sequence to make sure they feel the irony. Taped at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City, this 2016 performance marked Black’s return to stand-up after a multi-year hiatus. He addresses his time away by claiming he has been occupied with his primary professional skill of getting television shows canceled, which is a self-deprecating nod to his long history of cult projects like Stella and Michael & Michael Have Issues. The material also touches on his affection for the pop band Hanson, the concept of white privilege during a minor traffic arrest, and the absurdity of using ‘viability’ to define human life when actual babies cannot survive without constant help. The show highlights his penchant for crowd work when he asks the crowd for jail stories, leading to an impromptu, bizarrely real conversation with a spectator who spent time in prison as an accidental terrorist.