Why Pete Holmes’ Prior Work Bodes Well for HBO’s Crashing
Mary Cybulski/HBO
Most comedy fans were probably introduced to Pete Holmes through his Nerdist podcast, You Made It Weird. The show features an interview format roughly divided among three topics: comedy, religion and sex. The guests are usually comedians of different stripes, with a handful of notable exceptions, such as Noel Gallagher of Oasis or motivational speaker and Holmes collaborator Rob Bell.
Holmes, whose new HBO series, Crashing, premieres Sunday, is a non-threatening goofball with an over-exuberant laugh—an aural indication of his commitment to embracing the humor and happiness of everyday life. The whole of Holmes’ work, in particular the thread of benevolence he weaves through it, suggests that he’s poised to produce a TV series distinct from the usual half-hour comedy from a stand-up/auteur—one thoughtful about, and subversive of, the toxic masculinity that permeates certain corners of the comedy circuit, and television, too.
Equal parts inside baseball for comedy and audio evangelism for his New Age, mindfulness-based personal philosophy, Holmes’ podcast premiered in 2011, and its quality and longevity have cemented its place in the fast-growing podcast marketplace. What makes Holmes’ podcast great is simple, and it’s what makes any podcast great: the feeling that you’re listening to an intimate, interesting conversation between two people you wish were your friends.
An especially fitting example of how You Made It Weird’s conversations blend comedy and personal introspection in a way that feels endlessly wise is “John Mulaney Returns,” in which Holmes talks on the podcast with his friend, another successful comic and former Saturday Night Live writer, for the first time since Mulaney’s Fox sitcom flopped in spectacular fashion. “[It] didn’t go your way,” Holmes says. “It didn’t go any way,” Mulaney replies. “A critical and commercial failure.” Given how highly regarded Mulaney is as a comedian—and how well he’s done for himself since the cancellation of Mulaney in 2015—it’s all the more illuminating to hear how he bounced back firsthand. When someone that so many people like and look up to manages to recover from a stinging failure, it makes a listener feel more secure in the ebb and flow of her own weird life.
There isn’t much room for calculated criticism of social norms in unscripted conversations, but You Made It Weird creates a 338-episode backlog of the authentic enthusiasm that permeates Holmes’ other work. In his stand-up and on the podcast, Holmes manages to be both goofy and earnest by satirizing the toxic and fragile masculinity of his everyday life: He’s earnest about being goofy and goofy about being earnest. Holmes’ formal stand-up catalogue is comprised of two albums, including his first hour-long special, Nice Try, the Devil. His stand-up oozes an exuberance that’s hard to ignore. It also features a long-standing signifier of quality: punching up. Holmes tends to aim his comedy in the direction of straight, white men like himself, and much of his observational style focuses on the general foolishness and odd behavior that masculinity shoehorns them into. This quality of Holmes’ comedy makes him easy to like because it’s self-deprecating, without being so negative as to be dull.
Take, for instance, a joke from Nice Try, the Devil called “Gay for Gosling”: The crux of it is something Holmes calls “The Price Game,” which involves asking his straight friends how much money they would need to go down on another man and marveling as they refuse, no matter the amount, in an attempt to try and remain “macho.” “$100 billion a week for life? ‘Not even considering it, bro!’” Even when the stakes are raised to hypothetical extremes, such as saving one’s sick mother’s life, Holmes’ interlocutors still won’t budge: “Ma didn’t raise no homo, just an irrational monster who won’t save her.” While jokes about “being gay” for any particular individual usually aren’t funny, Holmes avoids this trap and instead treats the rigid, fearful sexuality of straight men with the hyperbolic mocking it deserves.