The Ugly Truth

Erik Griffin is not going to lie about his physical conditioning. He opens his first hour-long special hobbling onto the stage on a sprained ankle, quickly explaining that he did not get the injury playing a grueling game of pickup basketball; he stepped out of his car wrong. It is a fitting introduction to an hour spent confronting the realities of middle age, weight, and the social contracts people pretend to uphold.\n\nFilmed at the Laugh Factory in Long Beach, California, the special arrived in 2017 during a busy stretch for Griffin. Best known at the time as Montez on Workaholics, he had recently transitioned to playing stand-up Ralph Carnegie on the Showtime 1970s-era drama I’m Dying Up Here. This special, which also aired on Showtime, lets him drop the period-piece persona and lean into his natural, exasperated stage presence.\n\nMuch of the material centers on the indignities of dieting and the realization that ranch dressing is essentially the devil’s love juice. He spends a significant chunk of the set looking at the concept of The Purge, arguing that everyone secretly keeps a mental roster of people they would execute if the law vanished for a night, and suggests that service-industry workers would be the first to disappear. Griffin’s style relies on a slow, rhythmic build, punctuated by sudden bursts of irritation. He is comfortable sitting with the audience’s discomfort, particularly during a prolonged riff about how society finds obesity inherently funny in a way it does not with other terminal health conditions.