Review: 'Judged By Matt Walsh'

There is this prevailing theory in some circles that most comedians with a conservative political approach aren't especially funny. And that's not the case at all. Take, for example, longtime stand-up comedian Jeff Allen (Mischler). I worked with him back in the dinosaur days when he was a hard-drinking atheist with no discernable political beliefs. But in the decades since, he's born again, happily married, and become the Seinfeld of big church venues.

He is a politically conservative, God-loving, family-friendly comic. And he remains hilarious. Although he expertly weaves his worldview into his act, he remembers that his priority is to be funny. And that shows in his performances.

And that is where a lot of conservative comedians get into trouble. They are so focused on trolling the liberals and saying things they think will seem politically incorrect that they lose sight of what they are there to do. Be funny.

The Daily Wire has an SVOD called Daily Wire+ and it has been slowly rolling out a slate of original scripted and unscripted shows. And to be honest, they have struggled at times to find the right tone for the material. But I find their experiments fascinating, even if I don't always love the final results.



The newest project premieres today (Tuesday, April 9th) and is a parody of long-running syndicated courtroom shows such as People's Court. If you have watched any of those shows (and there are at least a half dozen on the air right now), it might be hard to imagine how anyone could spoof a television genre that already veers into self-parody. 

I also had another concern. Judged By Matt Walsh stars - no surprise - Matt Walsh - who is less a comedian than a conservative political provocateur. He's worked at the Daily Wire since 2017 and besides hosting The Matt Walsh Show podcast, he's written extensively for the site and appeared on several other conservative media TV shows and podcasts.

He isn't a comedian per se, instead, he generally falls into the category of saying things that make other conservatives laugh because it is so over-the-top and blunt. He once wrote a children's book called Johnny The Walrus that compared identifying as trans to someone deciding to identify as a walrus. He later received a lot of mainstream attention for mocking the casting of Halle Bailey in the remake of The Little Mermaid, arguing that "from a scientific perspective, it doesn't make a lot of sense to have someone with darker skin who lives deep in the ocean." 

His last Daily Wire+ project was the "comedy" sports film Lady Ballers, which centered around a down-on-his-luck-coach who decides to bring back his old male basketball team and have them pretend to be transgender in order to win the women's league championship. In the film, Walsh plays the woke beatnik “Kris.” As I said, his comedic stylings don't exactly have a light touch.

After watching the first episode I have to admit that large parts of Judged By Matt Walsh are legitimately funny. His general scorn for large parts of humanity works well on a show that features people who are - to be kind - not exactly examples of America's finest intellects. And in those courtroom interactions, his barely concealed disdain for the people in front of him leads to some seriously hilarious interactions. 



It also helps that the plaintiffs included in the two cases featured in the premiere are some of the densest people in America. Case one features a man who is suing his ex-girlfriend for $5,000 because she took his car without her permission and wrecked it. Her explanation was essentially "If he didn't want me to take his car, he shouldn't have left the keys where I can see them." He describes her as "crazy, in a fun way" and she certainly comes off that way at times. But she was also unable to comprehend the meaning of the phrase "emotional damage," leading Walsh to tell her "It's clear that you are damaged in various ways."

Case two was the story of two former friends who had purchased discount lip gel from some company in Korea. Although neither woman was sure if it was North or South Korea. The woman being sued refused to pay for her share of the gel shots after her lips apparently exploded on a flight to the Bahamas after she injected six doses into her lips in order to look especially full. Or, as she explained, "I say why look natural when you can look supernatural." And I don't think that means what she thinks it means.

Where Judged By Matt Walsh doesn't work is at some of the points in which Walsh is trying to be...funny...sardonic....(shrug). The episode opens with a long walk through a hall filled with his fictional ancestors, all of whom were judges and who ordered the execution of a lot of people. I suppose it's supposed to be trolling liberals. But it's one very weak joke repeated about six times too many before the show thankfully begins for real. And then there are the weird little things Walsh does before each case starts that are also supposed to be clever. And the word "supposed" is doing a lot of work there. It's just stuff that just stops the flow of the episodes entirely for no good reason.

Despite it all, I did enjoy Judged By Matt Walsh. I'd enjoy it more if Walsh could learn to get out of his own way and just embrace the stupidity of the situation. 

Judged By Matt Walsh premieres Tuesday, April 9th, 2024 on Daily Wire+.