Trash White

Moses Storm spent his childhood living in a converted Greyhound bus, dumpster diving for food, and keeping watch while his family ran grifts. Yet he looks like he went to an Ivy League school on an a cappella scholarship. In his debut special, Trash White, Storm turns his impoverished upbringing into a meticulously designed stage show. Performing on a set covered in literal garbage painted entirely white to match his pristine outfit, he balances heavy autobiographical stories with sharp punchlines, refusing to let the audience sink into cheap sympathy.

Filmed at The Montalbán Theatre in Hollywood, the special was produced by Conan O’Brien’s Team Coco and directed by Lance Bangs. Storm had spent years as a regular on O’Brien’s late-night show, often talking about how he used to tape episodes of Late Night over his family’s Christian homeschool video cassettes. That scrappy background translates to the stage here, where Storm rails against the trend of the “TED Talk” comedy special while delivering a highly curated performance of his own.

The material ranges from the ridiculous to the grimly absurd. He recounts his mother’s desperate attempts to stage accidents to win $10,000 on America’s Funniest Home Videos, a tense standoff with carjackers while he was completely naked, and a bleak memory of a Christian cheerleading coach screaming at children to smile because they were “on a pyramid, not a cross.” Rather than treating his past as a tragedy, Storm uses it to prove his central thesis: in any dangerous situation, crazy beats scary.

At the time of the release, Storm was enjoying a career peak, having recently starred in the NBC sitcom Sunnyside and preparing for roles in projects like Players and Everything’s Trash. Trash White was originally scheduled to tape before pandemic lockdowns postponed it. The delay only seemed to sharpen the show’s visual ambition, resulting in a debut that looks like a high-concept art installation but feels like a classic, hard-working club set.