Comedians who get laughs without cursing can be justifiably snobby about it. Swearing is an easy way to punch up a joke. But it’s the stand-ups who give up energy, volume and expressiveness and still kill who really earn my respect.
To be fair, low-energy comedians can make such an unexpected impression that they get chuckles just from saying hello. Take Aaron Chen, an exciting newcomer who approaches the microphone on his new special, “Funny Garden” (Netflix), with the puttering nerves of a middle schooler asking a girl to the prom.
“Hey, hello, how’s it going?” he begins in a hard-to-place accent, before giggling at the smattering of laughter. Neither dressed up nor exactly casual, Chen looks like someone who should be in the audience, not onstage. He immediately draws attention to how he seems unusual to New Yorkers because he’s both Chinese and Australian. “You don’t have this combo,” he says flatly. “My dad moved to Australia to give us a better life. I moved here to make it worse again.”
It’s a great political joke that, in a very short period of time, introduces Chen, establishes his style and pokes fun at MAGA. It’s a self-deprecating line delivered quietly that makes you lean in and listen closer.
While low-energy comics draw an initial chuckle of surprise, this kind of muted stand-up has a much more difficult challenge ahead, since the crowd wants to know the performer is in charge. Loud, gregarious charmers have more tools than monotone deadpan artists.
Take away emotional variance and the showmanship of act-outs, and all the pressure is on the writing, the language, the precision of the jokes. You might call it a purer style of comedy. You can’t coast on charm. Some of the most disastrous bombs I have seen have come from low-energy comedy. But it’s also emerged as one of the greatest and most fertile modern traditions. Steven Wright and Mitch Hedberg are godfathers. Tig Notaro pushed into new territory. So did Todd Barry, Demetri Martin and Hannibal Buress. And some of the funniest specials by emerging comics this year have come from two moseying, muted comedians who seem not just to upend expectations, but to satirize them.
Chen speaks with a casual, laid-back indifference that extends to his lack of articulation. The way he pronounces consonants suggests he’s barely trying. Like Norm Macdonald, he speaks in folksy generalities, presenting himself as something of a rube, boasting about keeping up his end of a conversation with “a high-level guy” at a dinner party. “Marriage: What a beautiful institution,” he says, in one of many banal comments that are hard to know if you should take seriously. There’s a caginess to his naïveté, producing clever angles. He marvels at the invention of tanks, then imagines how it went: A guy saw a gun and said, “I’d like to drive that.”
Chen’s special loses some momentum midway, which can be a common issue with low-key sets, especially those leaning on short jokes. Dan Mintz, a deadpan stand-up best known as the voice of the socially awkward 13-year-old Tina Belcher on “Bob’s Burgers,” clearly understands this dilemma and finds a creative solution.
Mintz turns his first special, “Well-Rounded Entertainer” (YouTube), into a slickly produced cartoon. Speaking slowly without a smile or frown, standing still, telling short, punchy jokes with the flair of a robot from a 1950s sci-fi movie, he is the least animated bit of animation you will ever see. The special begins with a shot of the exterior of the club, then a ticket, a glass of wine and finally a lovely view of Mintz backstage, waiting next to a blue curtain.
There’s a restraint to these images at first, but not for long. Mintz, who has written for “Veep” and “Nathan for You,” exploits the cartoon form in a variety of ways, complementing a joke by showing a seven-fingered audience member or a recurring appearance of Tom Hanks (the real Hanks is more difficult to cast). He’s not the first stand-up to use animation to add excitement to a set (see Tig Notaro’s “Drawn”).
But his is a terrifically effective effort, creative without being so stylized that it’s no longer a faithful representation of the art of stand-up. “I live in a colonial house,” Mintz says, blankly. “When I got there, people were already living there and I kicked them out.” This is the kind of joke that can take a beat before the audience gets it.
Others rely on quick verbal pivots: “Whenever a woman sees me naked, I can always feel her dressing me with her eyes.” Then there are those that seem like the result of dares to write as concisely as possible. Get a laugh in six words? No problem: “Word on the street is graffiti.”
Unlike many one-liner comics of limited emotional range, Mintz is not impersonal. His jokes lean on a persona: A colorless, slightly beaten-down, middle-age homeowner. “When you’re little and you hear a noise in the middle of the night, you’re like: Please be the water heater, not a monster,” he says, exhaustion in his voice. “But when you grow up, you’re like: Please be a monster, not my water heater.”
The unenthusiastic delivery fits the repressed-dad vibes. But his mild-mannered style sets up the flamboyant closing joke, with Mintz picking up an acoustic guitar and declaring that he is going to sing a song that sums up his act. Then an animated choir emerges behind him. But what begins as a soulful folk tune transforms into a punk song with Mintz dropping the instrument, grabbing a microphone, and, in a guttural roar, repeating these three phrases between guitar licks: “Low energy! Monotone! One-liners!”
Flames emerge from the stage. Mintz plays the drums, then the guitar, then breaks the mic stand. “Low energy! Monotone! One-liners!” he roars again. “Not in any particular order!”
It’s a raucous way to close a quiet show. But it also plants a flag for a fertile and expanding subgenre that could use some more pizazz. Low-energy stand-up finally has its own anthem.
