The fact that it's his first stand up, or the absence of fellow comics to "support" him or simply that I had *slightly* high expectations in the first place, or a combination of all these that became the reason for this set to be embarrassingly sub par and dreary.
It was a humdrum routine and the material was so poorly put together that even if it was an impromptu performance, it wouldn't be close to being called interesting nor creative. To put things into perspective, I've seen an uncle under the influence of more than a few pegs whip up better jokes, as corny as they may be, at a family gathering and get more laughs and the "indian head nod " of approval than Ashish from his audience, and they had paid to see him.
The special seemed to have majorly consisted of jokes that normally would've been cut out from the live performance and hence makes me wonder about how bad would the parts that have actually been "edited" out from the live performance be. During the 53 minute special, there were a few eye brow raises for a few jokes and more than the occasional scroll of the mouse to see how much of the special was left.
I personally am not a big fan of shows and sitcoms where recorded laughter is put in after each mundane joke; but felt that it could've been put in this one cause the audience obviously weren't going to.
Even though I truly believe most people won't make it to the end of the show, the last bit took me by surprise, and by that I mean, I was surprised as to how the show dipped to another level of low. He raised the bar of randomness in his last few bits and infused his material with some top-shelf cringe. Things just got really weird really quickly towards the end, and the sudden change in his material after he sat down, kinda reminded me of the last scene of the 2019 joker movie, and I was expecting Ashish to pull out a gun and then shoot himself in the head with it. Honestly, kinda disappointed that it didn't happen, cause I'm pretty sure if it did, then that would be the funniest moment of the show.
