If you are a musician, the toughest album is typically the second one. As the old adage reminds everyone, you have your entire to write the first one and maybe a year or two to write the second one.
But stand-up comedians don't even that small amount of grace. Once you start to break nationally, your life becomes a non-stop effort to crank out more material, often without having enough time to work it out in front of an audience. And you can never rest creatively. Because unlike a musician, no stand-up audience is interested in hearing that joke they really loved in 2004 again in a new show. They want all new material and it had better be as funny as it was the last time they paid to see you. Which is an almost impossible task to accomplish.
Nate Bargatze has arguably been the hottest stand-up comic over the past five years and he's accomplished that feat in a very old school way. Unlike the current wave of racist adjacent bro-comics who are dominating the comedy scene right now, Bargatze is personable, wry and generally works clean. His act would have been a hit ten years ago or even 50. It's a classic performing style and Bargatze has it honed to perfection.
But his popularity has also meant that he has to crank out a lot of new material. He did a Comedy Central special in 2015, a half-hour Netflix special in 2017, a full-length Netflix special in 2019, another special for Netflix in 2021, one for Amazon Prime in 2023 and now he's back at Netflix with the new special Your Friend, Nate Bargatze.
That's a lot of material to develop over the course of a decade and while Your Friend, Nate Bargatze isn't bad, it suffers from feeling familiar and often not fully developed. There is probably about ten minutes of strong material mixed across the hour-long special, and there are a number of moments that feel like they're just reworked old premises with new punchlines that aren't nearly as effective as the originals.
But mostly, the material in Your Friend, Nate Bargatze just feels like it needed more time onstage to develop fully. Bargatze is not a punchline-heavy style of comedian, and his biggest laughs are the result of a cascade of successive setups and sidebars. More than once, a routine in the special built to what seemed like a natural place for a punchline and it just meandered off into the distance without a resolution. Believe me, I was never five percent of the stand-up comic Bargatze is. And if I can see the untold punchlines, then I have no doubt he would find them (and improve on them) with a bit more time.
It's really difficult for a comic at Bargatze's level to work on new material. He's back on tour and audiences paying top dollar to see their favorite comic have a low tolerance to hear new workshop material that isn't there yet. But it feels like he needs to find a place to do that. Both for his sake and that of the audience.
Your Friend, Nate Bargatze is a pleasant way to spend an hour and if you're already a fan, I have no doubt you'll have a fun time. But the special feels more like a holding action than a fully functioning hot new set. Which to be honest, is a problem that most comics struggle with when they get to this level of commercial success.
Your Friend, Nate Bargatze is currently streaming globally now on Netflix.
