on comedy i love, and life
I’ve been watching some excellent, laugh-out-loud Indian comedy recently - Pushpavalli & Comicstaan (Amazon Prime, if you’re wondering). And I figured soemthing out - the kind of comedy I love.
You’d think I’d already know this, after years of watching stand-up and sketch, Youtube and television and movies. But I realised something really important.
I love comedy with people. People as in more than one. For me, stand-up is fun, but hollow. There’s something missing, it feels like eating a bag of cheap potato chips and not feeling full. It’s missing some ingredient that changes it from junk to food. There are a few rare stand-ups who don’t make me feel this way - Rowan Atkinson, Bo Burnham, a couple others I’m too tired to name. But they are the minority, and they do things a little differently.
But by default, I love my comedy to have chemistry. The chemistry of a two or a group of people, who’ve found this thing they love together and they’re making comedy together. There’s something awe-inspiring about it, about the way people just click and complement each other. It’s a feeling I realise I’m always craving, whether it’s at work, or in friendships or relationships. It’s such a rare feeling, and it’s a joy to watch other people experience it.
One of my favorite teams is Sumukhi Suresh and Naveen Richard. They’ve co-starred in Better Life Foundation, Pushpavalli and their own sketch comedy show. If you haven’t seen them in anything together, do it.
Naveen on his own is amazing - he plays crazy, ridiculous over the top characters, is great at character comedy, and has this unique voice where he’s simaltaneously sincere and insane. He’s really good with subtle comedy, where the tone and the words do all the heavy lifting. Sumukhi is different - she plays the stern, serious, straight character in Better Life Foundation, and even in some of their sketches together, but quickly pivots into sheer insanity - and when Sumukhi goes crazy, she goes crazy. Together, their work is just amazing - not just their performances, but their writing as well.
I’m not doing them justice, but you just need to watch their work to understand. ( Some other examples: Community, The Office, Middleditch and Schwartz, Chris & Jack (Youtube), Jake & Amir, the list goes on and on.)
Truth be told, I’m super jealous of them. That they get to do things together, to make comedy, to make art.
That connection between people, that’s what it’s all about. Those rare and precious moments of synchronicity. I feel like that’s what life is all about.
