Six and a half years after his first HBO docu-comedy concert special, Whitmer Thomas: The Golden One, Thomas is back with another concert joking up about growing up on the Alabama shore. This time, he’s made his childhood chums an even more integral part of the act. They’re not just his band, they’re also the source material for his jokes between songs.
The Gist: Thomas’s titular “terminal crew of dudes” are his closest friends, who also make up the band behind him onstage: Clay Tatum (guitar), Budd Diaz (drums), Jeramy Ritchie (bass), and Thomas’s older brother Johnny McCann (guitar).
They all play a part in the comedy, too, as Thomas draws from their childhoods growing up together in Gulf Shores, Alabama, and we see home videos of them sometimes doing the very things he’s now joking about onstage a decade or two later.
Bo Burnham produced his first HBO special, The Golden One, and Tim Robinson Presents shows up before the rest of the title credits for this hour. You also may have seen Thomas also in Robinson’s feature film, Friendship, or in last year’s Oscar-winning Weapons. He also is releasing an 8-song album, also titled Terminal Crew of Dudes, so if you like the songs you hear here, you can pick that up, too.
What Comedy Special Will It Remind You Of? As much about the music and the behind-the-scenery as it is about the jokes, Whitmer Thomas falls somewhere between such two other recent works for HBO/HBO Max: An Intimate Evening with Adam Pally and John Early: Now More Than Ever.
Memorable Jokes: You get the sense that nothing embarrasses Thomas, notwithstanding his jokes that he still wishes he were cool and not a beta male.
After one bit that doesn’t go quite like the audience had expected, he cracks: “I think it’s pretty clear that I was raised by addicts. But that’s okay.” When he tries to make a joke about his mother drinking herself to death, one of the band members gets up, pulls him aside, and urges him to try again. He moves on.
We learn about the time 5-year-old Whitmer ate too many shrimp at his brother’s Benihana birthday party, as well as when that same brother had a phase when he would only bark instead of speaking. He reminisces about meeting his best friend Jeramy at age 11, and immediately learning about anal sex. “You grow up fast as hell whenever you grow up in a beach trash town, you grow up real quick,” he says. That and briefly having access to the Spice Channel!
He also fondly remembers some of the odder things his dad has said and done, proving the apple doesn’t fall from the family tree.
And when he says “no joke” that the pro-life billboards in Alabama are written in comic sans font, we have video proof that he was, indeed, not joking!
Our Take: There’s a lot of sincere self-deprecation to be found here. He almost immediately pokes fun at himself for still skateboarding in his 30s, which means he finds himself hanging out with shirtless 14-year-old boys. When he does an impersonation of Michael Caine from after referencing the same quote in one of the band’s songs, he demurs: “I don’t care if it’s hacky, it’s really funny to do that.”
Most bands, when they perform live in concert, the singer will tell stories about the songs or crack a joke or two. Thomas and his cohorts, with their home movies as evidence, make the comedy as impactful as the music, which also happens to rock.
And even though this is labeled as a comedy special, you’re not coming here for the comedy as much as you’re here for the vibes.
Six years removed from his first special, Thomas reveals that he used to believe the circumstances of his parents defined him. Now he realizes it’s his closest friends who have made him who he is.
Or to paraphrase from one of his stories/bits, when life handed him hurricanes, he made hurricane treasure.
Our Call: If you hadn’t seen his earlier HBO special, but dig the idea of rocking out to some grown-up skater boys while hearing funny stories about their Alabama shore youth, then STREAM IT.
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.