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The Best Stand-Up Comedy Specials Available Online

Stand-up comedy has been undergoing somewhat of a renaissance on the Internet lately. As distribution methods for content have changed and people have been able to stream or download sets from their favorite comics instead of going to see them at clubs or waiting for their next stand-up special on Comedy Central, the variety of comedy available has expanded beyond a handful of high-profile performers.
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3. Todd Barry – The Crowd Work Tour

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Crowd work is not easy, and if it ever looks like it is then it is entirely due to the skill level of the comedian doing it. There is a lot of bad crowd out work there—something I’ve written about elsewhere—which relies on a handful of hacky jokes that can be broadly applied to basically any audience. Bachelorette party in the front row? There’s a misogynist joke for that. Two bros sitting next to each other at a table? There’s a homophobic joke for that. Only one black guy in the audience? Yeah, things are about to get uncomfortable for him.

Todd Barry is a seasoned pro, though, and his crowd work is at a whole other level. Doing an entire tour of all crowd work and no prepared material took a lot of guts, and he pulled it off without resorting to hacky jokes. Granted, he had the help of some generous editing with The Crowd Work Tour, since it was based not on a single show but a whole series of them. The live shows themselves were undoubtedly more of a mixed bag, because that’s just the nature of crowd work, but when it works, it really works. The final product is an hour of footage that rivals some of the best hours of other comics’ prepared material. That’s no small feat.

Where to find it: Louisck.net


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Author
Image of Jeremy Clymer
Jeremy Clymer
Jeremy Clymer is a freelance writer and stand-up comic who lives, works, and keeps it real in the Midwestern state of Michigan, USA. No, not that part of Michigan. The other part.