Iconoclasm can be refreshing, even righteous-but not if it’s indiscriminate. On stage Macdonald is almost literally punching down. Unless you kill your wife and a waiter, in which case, all bets are off.” The allusion to Simpson, also a Heisman winner, is meant to embarrass ESPN-but it comes at the expense not of a network executive, but of a twenty-one year old junior at the University of Michigan. “Congratulations, Charles,” Macdonald says, “that is something that no one can ever take away from you.
At the end of his set, he singles out Charles Woodson, the first defensive player to win the Heisman trophy. His opening monologue is often cited as one of his most daring performances-and Macdonald does refuse to coddle his audience. In 1998, Macdonald hosted the sixth annual ESPY awards. Macdonald’s penchant for subverting expectations means that’s a dictum he’s happy to ignore-with occasionally queasy results. There’s a reason comics are supposed to mock the strong at the expense of the weak: not only because it’s kinder, but because it’s funnier. It’s hard to maintain that façade while producing your own show.Īt his best, Macdonald’s commitment to the unexpected provides a kind of thrill-the catharsis that comes with watching someone break a rule (about joke-construction, for instance) you realize in retrospect was pointless. Then again: a great deal of Macdonald’s charm comes from his apparent refusal to give a fuck (one thing punk rockers were never good at: playing their instruments). The pilot, for example, pivots on Macdonald-playing a disgraced former hockey player who becomes a social worker to avoid doing prison time for tax evasion-telling one of his clients, who is employed at a massage parlor, “You’re a huge whore!” One wonders how that moment would play without the pre-recorded guffaws that punctuate Macdonald’s declaration, if viewers were forced to sit with their discomfort-as they would be on a contemporary show like Louie. If you can ignore the obligatory laugh track, Norm, which costars a deliciously antic Laurie Metcalf, is pleasant enough, despite the inevitable clash between Macdonald’s anarchic nihilism and the neat, three-act structure within which it’s forced to exist. Macdonald did enjoy some minor success with Norm, a sitcom that ran for three seasons on ABC (1999 – 2001). “Is there any way,” Majors asks his agent, at the story's tail-end, “in the contract, that you could put in that, um, I’m sad?” One standout stem-winder centers on the Six Million Dollar Man, Lee Majors, agreeing to do a commercial for a hearing aid. He riffs instead on the shame of death by autoerotic asphyxiation and the undeniable logic of suicide (“When people commit suicide, people go, ‘I don’t understand why,’ and I go, ‘You don’t?’”). Macdonald’s set avoids current events almost entirely. Earlier this month, Netflix released his newest stand-up special, Hitler’s Dog, Gossip & Trickery.
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In 2015, he performed the final stand-up set on The Late Show with David Letterman, holding back tears as he told the host, “I say in truth, I love you.” In 2016, The Washington Post published a profile-“actually a journalistic intervention”-titled “Will somebody please give Norm Macdonald another TV show?” He is in his third season of Norm Macdonald Live, an interview show that broadcasts on YouTube.
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Macdonald, best known for anchoring SNL’s Weekend Update from 1994 through 1997, has been enjoying a late-career renaissance. And all of us watching him, laughing-we’ve gotten away with something, too. By the end of the joke, Macdonald’s gotten away with something. The punch line-a real groaner under almost any other circumstance-delivers not just humor, but relief. Macdonald radiates the manic energy of someone who knows he might bomb and couldn’t care less. The moth joke shouldn’t work, but it’s hilarious. Whenever the camera cuts to O’Brien, the host looks somewhere between uncertain and uncomfortable. (The joke also appears, in more polished form, in Macdonald’s 2016 mostly fictional meta-memoir, Based on a True Story.) He grinningly fumbles his lines-all the characters have faux-Russian names Macdonald seems either to be struggling to remember or making up on the spot. When Macdonald tells this joke on The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien, it takes him close to four minutes. “Why on Earth did you come here?” The moth replies, “Cause the light was on.” “You should be seeing a psychiatrist” the podiatrist says.
He keeps a gun, cocked and loaded, on his bedside table he wishes he could bring himself to use it. “Where do I begin?” The moth’s job is meaningless his wife disgusts him his daughter is dead he no longer loves his son. “What’s the problem?” the podiatrist asks. My favorite Norm Macdonald joke is about a moth who goes to see a podiatrist.
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