Skip to content
Brick Wall Comedy
Brick Wall Comedy
Promotional art for Disgraceful
Cover image credit: via TMDB

Disgraceful

Tom Segura

Netflix · 2018 · 71 min

Deadpan storytelling about fast-food shame and the joy of staying home.

Watch on Netflix(opens in a new tab)

Tom Segura opens by defining the ultimate meaning of life as the desire to leave wherever you currently are and go home. It is a fitting mission statement for an hour of comedy that prides itself on being deeply unsociable while remaining thoroughly crowd-pleasing. Segura spends the set highlighting the minor, daily humiliations of modern living, treating his own lack of shame as a badge of honor.

Filmed at the Paramount Theatre in Denver and released on Netflix in January 2018, Disgraceful caught Segura at a pivotal career transition. His podcast, Your Mom’s House, was already a massive internet ecosystem, and this third Netflix hour solidified his status as a theater-filling headliner.

The hour is built around high-concept pettiness. He sets up a callback early on with an In-N-Out Burger interaction about fast-food shame, only to pay it off beautifully during an entirely separate story later. He also mocks the linguistics of offensiveness, listing off the white racial slurs that are still socially acceptable to use.

A lengthy teardown of an encounter with a fan in Lafayette, Louisiana, sparked localized outrage for its harsh Cajun caricature. He also courted controversy with a segment defending the R-word, drawing criticism from advocacy groups. He pairs these flashpoints with lighter, observational riffs on marriage, parenthood, and the limitations of male potential.

The set list

3 bits

  1. The Meaning of Life

    Opens the special arguing that the core meaning of life is 'Fuck this place. Let’s go home,' reflecting a desire to simply be on the couch rather than out in public.

  2. Unlimited Pig-tential

    Argues after telling an edgy story about physical flaws that he has a responsibility to remind women of what pigs men are, claiming every man has 'unlimited pig-tential.'

  3. Cajuns and Louisiana

    Rips into Cajun culture with comedic exaggeration, sparking humorous real-life backlash and misspelled hate emails from angry Cajuns.

How it plays

Tone
Sarcastic, deadpan, blunt, and unapologetic.
On stage
An understated, deadpan storyteller straddling the line between a curmudgeonly old man and an everyman swept up into absurd situations.
Pace
Methodical, relaxed conversational storytelling delivered with high confidence and understated energy.
About
pop culture, parenthood, parking lot power struggles, porn, political correctness, the desire to stay home

What the critics said

Generally received positive reviews, with critics highlighting Segura's elite understated delivery, tight joke structure with strong callbacks, and engaging conversational narrative style.

In the room: Energetic, sold-out Denver theater audience that Segura treated as a comfortable second home.

Summed up from reviews, articles and listings. Sources: imdb.com, comedydynamics.com, vulture.com, thecomicscomic.com, cinafilm.com, 800poundgorillamedia.com, en.wikipedia.org.

Backstory

Balancing parenthood and marriage with fellow headliner Christina Pazsitzky, alongside navigating modern sensitivities and political correctness.

Details

Released
Taped
2017, Paramount Theatre, Denver
Runtime
71 min
Where
Netflix
Director
Jaime Eliezer Karas
Topics
Before
Mostly Stories (2016)
After
Ball Hog (2020)

More from Tom Segura

If you liked this