Premium Blend: Gary Valentine

Gary Valentine hits the Comedy Central stage for a tight five minutes on Premium Blend, delivering the kind of energetic observational material that built his club career in the nineties.

Filmed and aired in 1999, the appearance catches the comic just as his real-life brother, Kevin James, was getting The King of Queens off the ground. Valentine would soon join the hit sitcom as Cousin Danny, shifting his focus toward television acting. This season three episode, hosted by Tommy Davidson, functions as a strange time capsule of comedy on the brink of the millennium. Valentine shares the broadcast with three other up-and-comers getting early national television exposure: Maria Bamford, Daniel Tosh, and Craig Robinson. Next to that trio, he plays the role of the traditional club comic, bringing straightforward setups and punchlines to a rapidly shifting stand-up landscape.