Thoughts and Prayers

Anthony Jeselnik starts his 2015 Netflix special by testing his crowd at The Fillmore in San Francisco, a city he cheekily targets for its reputation of being easily offended. He warms them up with a story about a baby locked inside a hot car, and once they laugh, the bargain is struck. For the next hour, Jeselnik adopts his usual onstage persona—an elegant, narcissistic sociopath who delivers carefully paced, two-line setup-and-punchline dark jokes about death, tragedy, and disease.

What makes this hour different from his previous specials is the final fifteen minutes. Jeselnik drops his villain act to talk about the mechanics of controversy and the social utility of his brand of humor. He breaks down the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombing, when his immediate, dark tweets prompted public outrage. He explains that posting online condolences is less about helping victims and more about self-satisfaction, comparing the practice of sending “thoughts and prayers” to masturbation.

He also details the corporate panic that surrounded his canceled Comedy Central series, The Jeselnik Offensive. He walks the audience through his refusal to apologize for a sketch celebrating a real-life shark attack in New Zealand, illustrating the friction between his uncompromising joke-writing and network standards. Filmed during a period when online outrage culture was solidifying, the special serves as both a collection of grim, highly crafted punchlines and a defense of the right to make them.