Netflix is home to Norm Macdonald Has a Show. If you think the eponymous comedian didn’t give much thought to the name of his show, you’re right. His best quality is that he doesn’t care about his image; in fact, like the fools and court jesters of old, he better fulfills his role the more stupid he seems. He has more comedic integrity and more dedication to his role as the fool than perhaps any other living comic. Sadly, he may one day be banned from all the distributors because of it.
The medieval court jester — the fool — was a distinguished employee of the royal court, meant to be a respite for monarchs from their image-centric careers. So important was the fool to royals that they paid him handsomely and granted him special privileges, such as the license to mock kings and queens.
Norm Macdonald has certainly earned the role of the fool today. Netflix pays him (handsomely? or middling attractively?) to host a show with celebrity guests — our modern royals. It consistently lacks professionalism, aptitude, fanfare, pre-interviews, scripts, laugh tracks, a live band, a knee-slapping audience, and politically correct language/opinions. Comedy before all is his mantra, and nothing is sacred as long as it makes him the butt of the joke. And that makes him a true royal fool of the highest caliber.
A bit he used to do on his podcast — which is very similar in format to Netflix’s Norm — is ask a guest (he’s undoubtedly researched) if their dad’s still alive; when they answer “no”, he says “Oh well…” and shrugs it off as if the dead parent just ruined what he was going to say next. We laugh because he’s being completely socially inept.
He also made a horrible joke that went something like “Where were you on 9–11? I walked through blood and bones searching for my brother…”
“Dear lord,” his guest said.
“…He was in Canada.”
The joke is in such bad taste that we laugh at him, rather than with him. And yet, when he reveals his impish smile, he lets us know he knows the joke is vile, and suddenly, once again, we are laughing together.
Both of these jokes came from sit-downs with another celebrated comedian. He’d often give them bad jokes to read live on air simply because he knew that the only way for a pro comedian to fool a pro jokester would be to give them amateurish, sophomoric, truly offensive jokes.
Don’t get me wrong. Norm has a moral code (or maybe it’s just a comedic one). He once critiqued another comedian for doing a whole routine mocking Christians; and he hosted Comedy Central’s Roast of Bob Saget, and completely bombed on purpose. Both were for the same reason, his code — targeting someone with a barrage of endless mockery isn’t funny, because it defeats the purpose of comedy: to make other people laugh.
Indeed, we are the most important persons of our own lives. With the age of the selfie and social media showboating, we have become our own royals. We take ourselves very seriously, so seeing someone who doesn’t — for our benefit — is the very definition of comic relief. We get to take a break from our image-centric lives and laugh. Occasionally, we let our walls down to see our own foolishness as we admit that there is some truth to jokes. And it feels great. It’s therapeutic.
However, since we are all fighting to be royalty, we mistakenly think we can’t let our guard down. Humorous jabs are now threatening jabs. We are permanently defensive, ready to lash out at anything that doesn’t uphold our images/royal positions in society.
In case you haven’t seen Norm Has a Show
Each interview is a facade for Norm’s foolery. But the guest doesn’t know it (unless they’ve followed Norm’s podcast closely or are intimate friends). So, while the guest pursues an interview, Norm gives them anything but that. He uses them as the straight man to his fool, making jokes and doing bits instead of groveling and praising.
David Letterman expected this when he went on Norm. And he played the straight man brilliantly, ending the interview prematurely by feigning offense and walking off the show. In case you have seen this episode and are skeptical that Letterman’s leaving was a bit, Norm has said repeatedly that the brilliance of Late Show was that Letterman and the audience were in on the joke, and the joke was the guest. Letterman has confirmed that description himself.
Norm continues this foolish tradition, and it keeps his celebrity guests on their toes. They don’t have the normal safety nets and harnesses of pre-interviews and scripts. So we get the unique privilege of seeing them unrehearsed, imperfect and very human, stumbling over their words, admitting they don’t get a joke, or awkward and silent, unsure of how to respond to Norm’s abnormality. The royal becomes unroyal for 35 minutes.
It might be the most ridiculous, unserious interview show in an overly serious society and that’s what makes it one of the most important.
Stand with Norm
A while back, Norm came under fire for saying something on an interview show that others took offense to. The internet responded one of two ways: people who wanted to punish him and people who wanted to stand with him.
It eventually blew over and Norm still has a show, and he still gets to do stand up. I worry that won’t last because we are constantly outraged, always waging royal war. As a result, the true comedian is an endangered species. He’s being replaced by something else, something dark and sinister: a professional criticizer of people and ideas different from us and ours.
Take a look at the homogenously one-way-leaning jokes of the late shows and stand up comedians as proof. The laughs come from pointing fingers at “the other” and mocking his idiocy, over and over, show after show. But tell me how that differs from bullying? In this comedy-poor environment, “Norm Macdonald” has become synonymous with “royal fool” to me. I have to point out this is meant as a great compliment before someone takes it the wrong way and gets offended.
Hopefully, society can get to a place where we can humor fools again. If we can’t, we’ll lose Norm, perhaps the last true fool. We’ll lose him because he has proven his comedic integrity again and again (e.g., fired from SNL, banned from The View…basically lost every job he’s ever had). We all know it was because he played the role of the fool perfectly; and those who got him fired, the role of the offended.
Maybe he did put some thought into the title for his Netflix show after all; like an on-again-off-again relationship, he knows his “and chill” partner might grow weary of his antics and so Norm has a show [for now]. I hope I’m wrong.
In the end, I believe he’d rather be a common fool than a royal sell out, even if it means being paid poorly, wandering from city to city in search of an audience, having no home for his show, and occasionally meeting Adam Eget under a bridge. Because that would be a humorless world where laughing comes at the expense of others, which doesn’t sound very funny to me.
May the world be so lucky to always have the privilege of enjoying a Norm Macdonald, a true fool.
