There’s a curious effect to the cumulative raunch of Tom Segura‘s new sketch show, “Bad Thoughts,” which feels like “I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson” for divorced dads who lost custody. As a standup, Segura delights in pushing buttons, often in, let’s say, unsophisticated ways; he’ll throw a slur at you, or talk about big dicks, the same way we order a sandwich. And his new sketch show for Netflix, while blissfully short, feels like his id on pure display: Shock humor taken to new extremes, but in the wrong, dumber direction.
The logline for the show, structured along three short episodes with some interstitials, is essentially Segura bringing life to all the edgy, transgressive thoughts that pop into his head about life, the universe, and his own insecurities. (Wait, isn’t that just standup comedy?) Granted, the sketches are shot with cinematic flourish by directors like Rami Hachache and “Drunk History”‘s Jeremy Konner, which puts a bit of polish on the the sometimes-literal turds you see on display. Some sketches are plays on arthouse cinema (or Segura’s notions of them, at least), like fake A24 trailers about an Italian janitor at an old folks’ home who brings the residents joy by indulging all their kinks, or a black-and white yarn about a divorced guy who has a decidedly pervy encounter with a conjoined twin. (Think Kuato from “Total Recall.”)
Some sketches work better than others, to be fair, and many of them are back-loaded in the last couple of episodes. These are usually the ones that center most around Segura’s specific anxieties about a standup, particularly one who’s now made it big and has to deal with the blowback of his offensive jokes. In one, he’s confronted on a flight by two dwarves offended by some of his standup bits about them, and it’s admittedly funny to see the lengths to which he’ll avoid that confrontation. In another, he plays a country singer who gets too famous to be relatable, then starts a literal cult so he can mine their more everyday stories for humor.
The sketches themselves are longer than you’d think (so long, in fact, that most episodes end with a “To Be Continued” so you get the payoff at the top of the next episode). Sometimes that works in its favor, like when an office confrontation of a coworker making a joke goes on so long that it ends up winning you (and the other characters) over. But most of the time, Segura gives the existence of anal sex or virtual reality porn a lot more mileage than it’s worth. The sketches that work best do so in spite of the scatology, not because of it.
The biggest problem, really, is Segura’s screen presence; he’s front and center in pretty much every sketch, and there’s just a kind of insecure smarm that none of his characters, despite hiding himself deep in a silly accent or prosthetic or ridiculous costuming, can mask. It’s most evident in the mid-sketch interstitials, in which Segura walks around calmly laying out the theme (like “communication” of each episode). I get what he’s going for in saying really ridiculous stuff with a straight face, walking around an all-white void like he’s Morpheus from “The Matrix,” but it just doesn’t land. Maybe his most successful transformation is an extended riff on modern-day Steven Seagal, mostly because he’s finally found a worthy target for parody.
As a die-hard Tim Robinsonite, it’s hard not to compare the relative sophistication (or, at least, comparative cleverness) of his dick and fart jokes with Segura’s crasser take. When Robinson centers a sketch around a character’s incontinence, it’s more about the ways he tries to overcompensate for people’s perception of it, and how he spins his flaws to make it the other person’s problem. Segura? Well, he just pulls his pants down to show his brown-stained buttcheeks. Robinson’s idea of a big-dick joke is a horse ranch where studs have small dicks so you don’t feel inadequate; Segura’s long-form tale involves a lot of huge prosthetic dongs swinging in a gym locker room and, eventually, a fire axe. There just aren’t as many layers to these gags.
But that’s the real joke, right? “Bad Thoughts” is, essentially, critic-proof—it’s difficult to complain about edgy jokes without coming off as a scold. But to crib a line from “Idiocracy,” it’s not enough to just see an ass farting on screen: You have to know whose ass it is, and why it’s farting. In this sense, “Bad Thoughts” mostly fails the smell test.
Full season screened for review. Currently streaming on Netflix.
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