Good Talk with Anthony Jeselnik is part talk show, part sparring match

Vulture

The six episodes of Jeselnik's new Comedy Central show feature guests who are either his friends or good acquaintances. "The sense that Jeselnik is friends with his guests feels crucial; it’s one thing to watch a comedian stand alone on a stage and be an unrepentant jagoff, but the chemistry of a talk show makes that kind of absolute disregard for social niceties play a little differently," says Kathryn VanArendonk. "There are predecessors for this shtick. Between Two Ferns features Zach Galifianakis as an even more forthrightly rude, more deliberately clueless interviewer, someone who dunks on his guests and their star images with an aim that looks haphazard, but is actually microscopically precise. Before Galifianakis, Stephen Colbert’s combative Colbert Report identity often offered interviewees a similar conundrum. When presented with someone who cannot actually be this much of a jerk, but who refuses to break character, do you play along? Do you try to dodge? Trying to best the host at his own game seems like a trap, and yet, sitting back and getting clobbered by the meanness isn’t particularly fun, either. Within these six episodes, Jeselnik’s guests fall into two distinct camps of how they approach the puzzle of his personality. Some recognize what Jeselnik is doing as hilarious, but still find themselves vaguely flabbergasted about whether they should match his deadpan intensity. Some, though, take a few moments to dial into Jeselnik’s game and then give back every bit as good as they get, leaning into the uncomfortable, disorienting boorishness so happily that Jeselnik is eventually the one who cracks, clearly laughing out of true delight rather than put-on politeness."

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• Anthony Jeselnik original pitched a clip show of him skewering comedians' performances: "To be honest, we didn’t really have access to that many clips," he says. "You would think that Comedy Central would have this whole clip library, but they don’t really own all of it. Originally, we wanted to throw people under the bus. There are things that certain comedians do, or things that every comedian does, that make me think, 'I can’t believe you do that!' So we decided to showcase those things, like how many people end their sets by saying, 'That’s my time.' Or, how many people end on just a callback, which is a lazy thing that comics do."
• Jeselnik discusses his love of ClickHole