New on Netflix: Seth Meyers - "Lobby Baby"

I will admit that I am not really a fan of Seth Meyers because he was at the helm of Saturday Night Live during a time I think the show became nearly unwatchable. He was involved from 2001 to 2014 and now here we are in 2019 and i would be very surprised if that show gets renewed for much longer. Their diminishing ratings and viewership during that time suggests that a majority of the TV world agrees that the show went downhill but to be fair to Seth, the emergence of on-demand TV and a rather unpopular time slot (late on a Saturday) could have a great deal to do with that as well.

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When Seth left SNL to start his own show called "Late Night" it didn't take very long to realize that Seth really only had one shtick and that was to tell never-ending jokes bashing political conservatives and later, to focus almost entirely on Trump.

Regardless of how you feel about the current President, I find it extremely lazy that a person can have an entire show that is almost never about anything else.

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_{Just imagine 30 or so jokes attacking Trump and that is basically every episode of "Late Night"}

Again, to be fair to Seth, all of the other late night shows such as Steven Colbert, Jon Oliver (which isn't really a late night show), Jimmy Kimmel, Samantha Bee, and more, were pretty much doing the same thing because it is undeniable that there is a demand for that. For me it just seems a bit unimaginative to constantly be preaching to the choir and basically, it lacked edge.

Therefore, when I read that he had a 1 hour stand-up comedy special I was thinking that it would just be more of the same and it didn't make much sense to me that it would exist if that was all he was going to do on a stage in Minneapolis as well.

I was actually pretty surprised and happy to see that he diversified his topics a bit. He talks about his family, video games, living in New York (no real surprise there as this is a common comedian tactic,) and of course, because it was inevitable, and entire section dedicated to bashing Trump.

However, Seth did something that I thought was actually very inventive of him, and probably will lead to a lot less people hating on this special on principal.

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That's right, Seth Meyers had an button pop up on the screen where the TV audience who is tired of hearing his political stuff could skip that entire section. I tried it because i thought it might be a trap but i'll be damned, it really does skip the entire section where he talks trash about Trump and conservatives in general. I went back and watched that 13 minutes or so anyway, because I wanted to see if anything unusual occurred during the political section and while I suppose it depends a lot on where you lie politically, it was more pandering to an audience that he is already aware agrees with him. I dare you to try that at a venue in Texas, Seth.

I suppose this is forgivable because it's not like this was any sort of surprise that Meyers would tackle this subject considering his entire solo career is based on very little else.

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I went into this expecting to dislike it, but in the end I have to say that it was actually a lot funnier than I ever imagined it would be and I LOL'd for real a few times.... and that's saying a lot since I haven't really found Seth amusing for the entire 18 years of his comedic career.

_{from the official Netflix channel}

All in all, i would say that i was borderline "delighted" about how funny I found this but a lot of this simply has to do with the fact that I had really low expectations going in. It's worth seeing, but it certainly wasn't on the level of the best in the biz.

My overall rating = Decent

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If you are interested here is a list of the specials I have watched that are currently available on Netflix (for my region anyway.)

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Stuff I rate as "Excellent"

Dave Chappelle: Sticks and Stones
Ricky Gervais- Humanity
Adam Sandler: 100% Fresh
Joe Rogan: Strange Times
Dave Chappelle: Equanimity, The Age of Spin, and Deep in the Heart of Texas

The "Really Good" stuff I have seen includes

Nate Bargatze: The Tennessee Kid
Kevin Hart: Irresponsible
Bill Burr: Paper Tiger

The "Decent" stuff I have seen includes

Zach Galifianakis live at the purple onion
Ellen Degeneres: Relatable
Ken Jeong: You Complete me, Ho
Tom Segura: Disgraceful
Seth Meyers: Lobby Baby

And the really not so good to awful stand up is

Amy Schumer: Growing
Amy Schumer: The Leather Special (quite possibly the most unfunny thing I have ever seen)
Donald Glover: Weirdo
Hannibal Buress: Comedy Camisado
Simon Amstell: Set Free
Bert Kreischer - Secret Time
Mo Gilligan: Momentum