From The Comic's Comic

April 2022

Comedy doesn’t have a Human Resources department, so leave it to Piffany to dole out honors and/or discipline accordingly. Piffany’s Employee of the Month for April 2022 is Jerrod Carmichael. Congrats Jerrod!

For those of you just joining us here on Piffany, a brief recap of “fun” “facts.” I started the Employee of the Month last year because I wanted to carve out a space on this newsletter each month to shout-out an individual or group who really helped move the ball forward or carry the team — the team being either the comedy industry, or all of us as a society. This idea grew out of an annual podcast tradition I started back in 2015 with Jason Zinoman, the comedy critic for The New York Times, where we convene each December to look back at the year in comedy and debate whether/who had emerged as the year’s MVP, or most valuable performer. Jason and I each have our own definitions for what makes an MVP in comedy, and those definitions themselves evolve from year to year, depending upon the industry and societal landscape.

So when I jumpstarted this Substack last summer, I thought about ways to foster our ongoing dialogue. Initially, I imagined a monthly Top 10 ranking of who’s who in comedy (an idea obviously inspired by the old polls conducted among members of the AST — A Special Thing — message board). In practice, I found that idea much more difficult and perhaps problematic. So I created this monthly EOTM feature.

Past Piffany Employees of the Month have included: Amy Schumer (March 2022), Volodymyr Zelenskyy (February 2022), W. Kamau Bell (January 2022), Nicole Byer (December 2021), Jackie Kashian and Laurie Kilmartin (November 2021), James Austin Johnson (October 2021), Phoebe Robinson (September 2021), Ms. Pat (August 2021), and Kevin Hart (July 2021).

I decided I’d post this shout-out on the first Friday of the following month, in retrospect, taking a page out of the monthly jobs report from the U.S. government.

Of course, it’s May 6 today, and already so much has happened in the world, in the nation, and in comedy that feels so overwhelming, you might wonder, why even talk about April when we’ve got judges and state governments trampling on the rights of women and the LGBTQ+ community and the even the teaching of American history, and we’ve also got audience members from the super-famous to the super-ordinary assaulting comedians onstage, and I’m tired just writing that sentence.

But. Yes. April.

Let us not forget the month of April, in the year that we’ve collectively decided to call 2022, and how much Jerrod Carmichael moved the needle in the span of a couple of nights.

He opened the month by releasing his third HBO special, Rothaniel, a brutally honest and breathtaking piece of work which also managed to serve as his coming-out party. I compared Carmichael to the late great Richard Pryor in my review of it for Decider.

Then he got himself the guest-hosting gig for Saturday Night Live the following night, knowing full well how hot the spotlight might feel on him.

And what did he do?

Not only did Carmichael serve up one of the best monologues on SNL in years, as he managed to work in that week’s Oscars slap deftly into a discussion about his sexuality. All very funny. All while serving up lewks!

His former NBC sitcom, The Carmichael Show, hit all the funny notes while also covering weighty social issues, too, and brought both Tiffany Haddish and Lil Rel Howery to national audience recognition. I could sit here and wish that show had lasted longer, but perhaps the Peacock network’s shortsightedness actually benefited all of us in the long run, as that show’s end allowed Tiffany, Lil Rel and Jerrod to all reach even greater heights.

There are few people in comedy or in life who can pull off the kind of stand-up performances that Jerrod can. And he proved that once again last month. Congrats Jerrod!

Please let me know who you think should be considered for honors this past month or for the month to come!