Perhaps any comedian doing topical jokes on TV should start off by announcing, “I hereby apologize in advance for anyone who will be offended, even if they’re offended by jokes I did not tell.”
Consider the case of Michelle Wolf. After her monologue at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, the stand-up comic was roundly criticized for criticizing White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ appearance, which, if you review the transcript, she did not do. Wolf just congratulated Sanders on her makeup: “She burns facts and then uses that ash to create a perfect smoky eye.”
Undaunted by the blowback, the 32-year-old comic and “Daily Show” alumna has launched a weekly Netflix show, “The Break With Michelle Wolf,” with a half-hour episode each Sunday.
Wolf brings a unique voice to the mix of TV humorists, partially because it is so high-pitched that when she’s excited you can’t always make out her words. And it’s not an act. “Yes,” she says in the first episode, “this is my real voice.”
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Her comedic voice is unique, too. Sometimes that’s a good thing. Her parody ad for an Amazon Echo that demands “lunch meat” is crazy funny. But her remarks on the Miss America pageant’s decision to can the bathing suits led to a truly tasteless JonBenet Ramsey joke.
Yet Wolf keeps on going, which is befitting a woman who runs 50-mile ultramarathons. And despite its unfunny and cringe-worthy patches, the show has bursts of absolute brilliance.
Wolf’s routine about how Bill Clinton has not personally apologized to Monica Lewinsky was a tour de force. She slammed the media’s past unfair characterizations of Lewinsky. She issued kudos for Lewinsky’s performance as an intern that are too vulgar to print. And just for the heck of it, she segued into other apologies that need to be made: “Bees, sorry, we didn’t know we needed you.”
That segment serves as a reminder that Michelle Wolf is a dangerous comic. She says she “broke” the correspondents’ dinner. Maybe she’ll end up breaking TV, too.
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