“Do you work in comedy?” I ask.
“Ironically I’m in drama,” he says. “Honestly, I got a job on someone’s desk early on who was a big exec in the drama department at Netflix, and then it just sort of went from there. I like it, though. There is so much drama in comedy, and so much comedy in drama. I don’t think the two universes are as separate as they used to be, unless you’re talking about sitcoms. It’s all blending together.”
The waitress appears with our drinks.
“Oh, great,” Jake says. “Thank you.” He takes them out of her hands.
“Anything else I can get you?” she asks.
Jake looks to me.
“I think we’re good,” I say. “Thank you.”
The mic glitches to life, and then I see a man onstage.
“Hi, everyone, welcome! Thank you for coming to our little corner of Hollywood. We have a great show for you tonight, as always. Some of the best of the best are here. We have a show every Saturday, and if you’d like to support our Wednesday night special, please go to the website. OK. First up I’d like you to welcome Vie Rosen!”
People start clapping and yelling.
I turn to Jake. “She’s familiar.”
“She’s amazing,” he says.
“Vie is a comedian, television host, and the winner of 2016’sLast Comic Standing. She’s filmed four Netflix specials and is about to go back on the road for her tour, ‘Can Buy Me Love.’ Please welcome Vie Rosen!”
Jake leans over and whispers in my ear. “I was at Netflix when she made her first special. I love her comedy.”
Vie jogs onto the stage. I’ve seen her before. She hosted a show calledBride Wars. She was hysterical.
She’s about five feet six, has a ponytail of wispy blond hair, and is wearing a white T-shirt with a black bra underneath. She looks cool. The kind of girl who declines a dinner of gossip for a second set on a Saturday night.
“Hello, everyone, welcome to your comedy tour de force tonight. Where are you all here from?”
Some people call out various cities, Vie has a bit for every single one. “Why are all fancy universities in small towns? The entire middle of the country is just filled with places where rich kids get shipped in to go to college and the kids who are from there stay and work at Walmart. Maybe if we invested a little more in education and a little less in the coke habits of lacrosse players we’d be better off.”
Her comedy isn’t centered around jokes, exactly—it’s centered around revelation. For every laugh she gets, and she gets a lot, it’s a laugh imbued with the natural comedy baked into the exposure of uncomfortable truths. The things we pass by and don’t notice, or at least, don’t call out. It’s a comedy of relief, it turns out. It feels good to hear the things you think but don’t say out loud. It feels good to just be spoken to honestly, for once. So much of our current moment seems to be pandering—she says that, too.
Vie does ten minutes, tops, and then exits the stage. I feel like I could watch her all night.
“I love her,” I tell Jake.
He responds by slipping an arm over the back of my chair.
There is a twentysomething comic who goes by the name Trey Ire, who is also very good. My favorite part of his set is about LA traffic: “LA traffic is so bad. I once stayed in a relationship just so I could use the carpool lane.” Then: “I mean, I can’t turn left in Pasadena because someone changed lanes at LAX.”
Next up there’s a short guy I recognize as a character actor from the 2010s.
“Wasn’t he inCHiPs?” I ask Jake.
He nods.
The guy is fine, but his comedy feels a little dated. I stifle a yawn. Jake notices.
“You want to duck out of here and get something to eat?” he asks me.
“Seinfeld?” I mouth.
Jake runs his tongue over his top teeth. “Yeah, about that,” he says. “Seinfeld isn’t coming.”
