Taste It

Nick Swardson isn’t trying to evolve. While his peers hit middle age and start writing hours about their personal growth, Swardson steps on stage in a clean t-shirt to talk about booze, women, and figure skaters getting diarrhea. He leans into what he knows: the aggressive stupidity of his own life and the high-energy delivery required to sell it. The premises stay firmly in his usual lane, spanning everything from fending off his mother’s cat to acting out the first person to ever experience brain freeze.

Filmed at the Paramount Theater in Austin, Texas, Taste It arrived at a strange transition point for the comic. Swardson had spent the previous few years heavily embedded in Happy Madison film productions and Comedy Central television shows. The schedule pushed him to take a break from the stage, and he admitted in interviews that he wasn’t entirely sure this hour was going to happen. When he finally returned to the road, he bypassed the urge to mature his act, opting to close the show with a story about trying to sleep next to Liv Tyler on an airplane.