She then abruptly changed the subject.
Of the show, Allison Keene writes that “for the first 30 minutes, Schaal flies high, hitting the mark on everything.” But then:
“…after a lazy eye joke fell completely flat, Schaal totally lost it. She said the joke had been her grandmother’s and seemed genuinely upset at the poor response. Unable to get past the moment, she corpsed repeatedly on the pronunciation of the word ‘airplane,’ saying it over and over again to a chuckling audience who, like me at that point, thought it was part of the joke. It wasn’t. Right?”
You can watch that clip here, including Schaal’s hasty exit as things seem to unravel.
Commenters on Keene’s article vehemently disagree that Schaal had any such breakdown; most compared her to legendary comedian Andy Kaufman who loved hoaxes. Just as many said that if it was a joke within a joke, it wasn’t funny.
In an interview for Vulture promoting the special, Schaal’s comedy partner Kurt Braunohler asks her about how it all went:
“KB: So, Kristen, you have a one-hour special coming out on Comedy Central. Are you excited?
KS: Um. I am not excited about it.
KB: You’re not excited about it?
KS: Are you excited about it? You’re in it.
KB: I’m excited about it, yeah. I think you should be excited.
KS: Why would I be excited about it? I mean why are you excited about it? [Laughs.] You and I both know that it did not go well.
KB: It didn’t go as you expected it to go. I think that you have to redefine what you’re talking about. It didn’t go badly; it just didn’t go the way you wanted it to go, right?
KS: It definitely didn’t go the way I wanted it to go. Because it went badly. I just can’t even believe they’re going to air it.
KB: You’re being ridiculous. You’re being ridiculous! This is your hour-long comedy special. You’ve been working on it a long time. And I … I was really proud of you; I thought it went great.
KS: Ha-ha, okay, right. I disagree. I think it was a nightmare. The only thing that’s good about it is that you’re on there. You’ll get some exposure, but I don’t think this is the kind of exposure you want. Definitely not the exposure I want.”
Braunohler actually joined Schaal at the end of the show to do a bit they’ve done before on Radiolab called “Kristen Schaal is a horse.” During that segment, you can hear the audience respond with laughter, and then as it goes on longer and longer, get silent, and then laugh again. It’s a level of absurdist comedy that’s not seen too often, particularly in stand-up.
In comments below the Vulture interview (which went up Monday before the special had aired), a few people “spoiled” the special with their take on it as audience members, prompting the site to delete a few of them. (Click image to enlarge comment)
Schaal’s the kind of comedian who always seems to be performing, and it’s a little hard to imagine that most of this special – even if it didn’t go exactly her way – wasn’t like that too. Even if it was a total disaster on her terms (whatever those are), she’s committing to her stance that there’s no way this thing should have been aired, through her Twitter feed and in Q&A’s about it.
Some of the commenters thought Keene herself was trolling (because meta-trolling is so in right now), with one writing “In case it’s not obvious the author here is also engaging in the joke that Kristen created….” But Keene’s tweets about Live at the Fillmore indicate otherwise. (Click image to enlarge tweets)
You heard it here: life ≠ performance art ≠ comedy.
