It’s been nine long years since Ryan Hamilton announced his presence among his generation’s sharpest stand-up comedians with his 2017 Netflix debut, Happy Face (and my #2 pick for that year’s best!) Where has he been since then? Well, you cannot blame him for taking some time off in 2022 when he began that year hospitalized after getting hit by a bus! Now he’s ready to turn that tragedy into comedy we all can laugh at, and with.
The Gist: There’s adding insult to injury, and then there’s adding horrific injury on top of a potentially fatal pandemic exposure. As Hamilton explained in his teaser trailer, he had just finished a mandatory COVID-19 quarantine in Los Angeles and was preparing to pick up a rental car before returning home when, on Jan. 1, 2022, he got hit by a bus!
You may recognize Hamilton from his appearances in two Amy Schumer projects (Inside Amy Schumer and Life & Beth). But he’s also got a rich association with Nate Bargatze, who directed and executive produced this new hour from Hamilton.
What Comedy Special Will It Remind You Of? Would you believe The Muppets Take Manhattan?!
Memorable Jokes: Hamilton has a solid half-hour about the bus that hit him in a crosswalk, and the aftermath of it all; not just in describing his injuries and medical care, but also in highlighting the absurdity of how we typically use the phrase “hit by a bus” to describe our feelings. It certainly makes you wonder just how we ever turned “throwing somebody under the bus” into a colloquialism.
Our Take: While it’s both cathartic and humorous (and even humerus, even if Hamilton says “I refuse to make that joke.”) to hear him turning his personal tragedy into comedy, the rest of the hour finds Hamilton expanding his reach to topics with which everyone can identify.
What men cannot relate to the awkward conversation with a barber or hairstylist? What does it mean that people want to cling to “middle-aged” as a label despite having aged well past their midpoint? And how did we end up giving every generation their own name and label anyhow? Blame Tom Brokaw, Hamilton supposes.
Regardless, Hamilton shares keen observations about the current malaise many of us are feeling.
We may not be moving in the world as much as we need to, and yet the technology has so many of us feeling we need to keep the TikToks moving to feed the content machines that might make us relevant.
At least in Hamilton’s case, he knows he might not be famous just yet, but among Ryan Hamilton’s, he’s top dog.
Perhaps it’s because he can still turn up comedy jewels such as this one, imagining an exhibit remembering comedy in a future museum. “It’ll say something like, ‘Society was very anxious and distraught, so much so that they would actually plan their laughter together at specific times. And they would gather themselves in laugh rooms throughout the country. There were laugh leaders who would try to encourage them. But it was ironic because they were often angry or sad. This is what the middle class really enjoyed.’”
Our Call: STREAM IT! Hamilton opens his hour acknowledging that his fans, who can fill theaters and even an arena or two, may have set expectations high for the friends they’ve dragged to see him tell jokes. “I’ve been eking it out like this. A little word of mouth here and there.” This special should go a long way in spreading that word-of-mouth, and deservedly so. Let’s hope we don’t have to wait another nine years (and have Hamilton suffer another tragedy) to get the next special.
Sean L. McCarthy works the comedy beat. He also podcasts half-hour episodes with comedians revealing origin stories: The Comic’s Comic Presents Last Things First.