Patton Oswalt: We All Scream

The special was recorded recently, in 2022, can we stop the ridiculous covid vaccine jokes already?? Or are those necessary to please a certain demographic or the Netflix overlords? After being a big fan in the past, this made me lose all respect for him... My wife and I really enjoyed his previous specials and we loved watching him in other TV shows like King of Queens, but were really disappointed by this special. I wasn't expecting that we wouldn't even end up watching it all the way to the end, but here we are...

Too bad, we likely won't bother with whatever Patton Oswalt ends up producing next.

I have generally have enjoyed most of Netflix's stand up special's and I can say I am a fan of Patton's , but wow. Let me just start by saying, why is comedy post Covid, the same topic for each stand up and yet, comedy as a whole, just feels softer.

Cut to " We All Scream." Patton describes a 13 minute, yes, 13, which honestly should have been no more than thirty seconds, about... clown pubes in a barn? This was your opening material? The more he said it I kept wincing, and he didn't move on, kept going back to this stupid metaphor, which made zero sense. Yet, Patton mentioned this material took him two years to come up with. This is why we have producers and Creative Executive's, so someone can say " Don't do this."

Another detail that really is frustrating me with these specials in general, I get it, Covid was a big thing yes. It's over, yet Patton is doing material on the lockdown, vaccines and telling us he watched Deadwood. Can we please just get one special not to say the words " Lockdown" " covid" or " vaccinations" anymore, please? I don't know about you, but I get annoyed being September 2022, and a stand up is talking about lock downs. Let's go back to actually creating real comedy without talking about injections or not being able to do anything.

I've watched Pattons stand up specials in the past and enjoyed them, I've been a fan of his for a while.

This special however was one of the worst stand up comedy routines I've ever seen. It's hard to believe a professional comedian wrote this material and thought it was worthy of a special. Probably the most glaring issue with this is that there are no actual jokes, just unfunny stories.

Might be worth the watch though because I did get some enjoyment out of the immense second-hand embarrassment each time one of his "jokes" didn't land and the audience was dead silent, which was nearly every joke.

Overall a major disappointment and hopefully Patton can redeem himself in the future.

I've enjoyed Patton Oswalt in exactly one thing, his minor role in Justified. In it he plays a sheriff of a very small town if I recall correct. He didn't write his own material and the role, while it has some comedic elements, isn't strictly comedic. I don't know if he possibly got his start in stand up but I don't possibly see how, he's just not funny at all. That's quite an accomplishment cause the only people I know of that are this terrible at comedy are Amy Shumer and maybe Melissa McCarthey. Its kind of amazing how terrible some content is, and all just to appease the streaming gods. Our options quadrupled but its like there's less quality television than ever.

I've loved everything Patton has done. His inclusion in anything boosts it. This special was so hyped and I was so looking forward to it so perhaps I set myself up for disappointment. It dragged right up to the final disappointing scatalogicsl bit.

Couldn't believe the 10 minutes of front row 'what do you do for a living' filler crowdwork in a special. It's like this review. It is too short so I'm having to add filler to reach the arbitrary minimum. This review is worse for it. How did that crowd work stay in?

Not terrible but Payton's bar is so high and this was not there. I need to go back and watch any of his previous fat superior work.