Worst Kind of Thoughtful

Mike Vecchione took an unusual route for this release, transforming his acclaimed 2018 comedy album into a bizarre collaborative experiment. Rather than stand in front of a microphone at a theater, he had dozens of fellow comedians, friends, and fans film themselves lip-syncing and acting out his original audio tracks. The result is a feature-length collage of short, user-generated sketches.

Because the underlying material comes from a record that Vulture named the best comedy album of 2018, the joke writing is incredibly efficient. Vecchione relies on a high volume of quick, cynical punchlines rather than long-winded stories. Big-name peers like Dan Soder, Rachel Feinstein, Joe List, Sam Morril, and Mark Normand pop up to mouth his words, taking on his deadpan cadence for bits about the anxiety of riding the Mega Bus, the existential threat of extremely spicy Indian food, and the social etiquette of the airplane middle seat.

The production has a home-movie feel, edited together by Jeremy Baumann with Vecchione serving as writer and narrator. Some segments are literal interpretations of the bits, while others lean into abstract visual gags. It represents an odd moment in the 2024 comedy landscape, where a veteran club comic decided to crowdsource his visuals rather than film a traditional hour.