‘Sometimes People Just Break’
Please watch ‘Chris Gethard: Career Suicide.’
“And I think to myself: you should hit the brakes,” Chris Gethard says, aware that he was in the other driver’s blindspot. “And then I think: no, don’t. Because this way it’s just a car crash, and this way your parents don’t have to go around town being the parents of the kid who killed himself.”
Within the first fifteen minutes of Chris Gethard’s HBO special, Career Suicide, it becomes clear that this isn’t the standard stand-up comedy set. It isn’t even trying to be. The show, after being picked up by producer Judd Apatow (one of the satirical geniuses behind Knocked Up, Bridesmaids, Trainwreck, and The 40-Year-Old Virgin, among other popular comedies), was presented as an off-Broadway show. This explains the subtle straying from the stand-up set format, wherein Gethard doesn’t have to worry about keeping the audience constantly laughing. The special, which premiered on May 6, ran with the tagline: “Comedy can be found in the darkest places.” Although true, the statement doesn’t do the show justice and instead serves as a choppy impression of what actually transpires in the ninety minutes of airtime.
I don’t normally notice directing in stand-up specials, which I think is how it’s supposed to be, except in the case of Career Suicide. Kimberly Senior, the director, manages the more intimate, serious moments with lighting shifts and multiple cameras. During one of the most poignant and relatively hopeful moments, Gethard describes driving across the country to a job offer, when suddenly he realizes (peacefully) that he’s the only car in sight. The shot is wide when he says, “I’m small and I do not matter and that is beautiful.” It’s so simple, but also represents the moment when Gethard realizes, “Another option is maybe someday I die old and happy,” something which he previously hadn’t thought was possible.
This self awareness and ability to appreciate moments for what they are drives Career Suicide, from Gethard acknowledging that there wasn’t a Traumatic-Event™ that led to his mental illness (“sometimes people just break”) to following up with the fact that this is OK (“you don’t get to pick what breaks you; you really can not predict what’s going to save you, but please keep your eyes peeled for it”).
Perhaps the greatest part of Career Suicide is Barb, Gethard’s longtime therapist. She’s a character in the show, almost as much as Gethard himself, despite only existing in stories. Their psychiatric coupling is remarkable, especially in the context of the other therapists Gethard encountered before finding a perfect fit in someone he describes as bad at her job (when Gethard told her she would be included in his stand-up special, Barb platonically suggested that he move in with her and they write the set together).
Comedy has always been intrinsically bound to tragedy, so the recent dialogue that has opened up about mental health in an informative, but still satirical way is by no means a surprise. However, Gethard manages to go beyond the conversation of self and touch on how others are affected by his depression and anxiety. He captures the very real fear of sharing with a loved one that you’re sick when he talks about finally telling his mom that he wants to die, after the urging of his ex-girlfriend (who did the best thing possible and took the choice away from him, saying that she would call his mother in the morning if he didn’t tell her that night). He describes reaching out his mom to wake her up in the middle of the night, but faltering for a moment, “Because I realize that this is the last moment in my mom’s life where she gets to think that she has a normal kid.” This is arguably the hardest part of opening up about mental sickness: the knowledge that it will undoubtably cause loved ones pain, to some degree. But Gethard comes back to this at the end of the special when he says, “And now when I call my mom she doesn’t have to be scared.”
This is arguably the hardest part of opening up about mental sickness: the knowledge that it will undoubtably cause loved ones pain, to some degree.
“We don’t judge people when they die in car crashes but we do judge people when they die of suicide. I think it’s one of the strangest things we’ve given ourselves permission to do,” Gethard says to a quiet audience, following his first real encounter with suicide. The stage, then the mood, lightens, followed by laughter, as he adds, “And ultimately I think it’s a branding problem.”
What Gethard has cultivated is required viewing for anyone who is suffering, has suffered, or loves someone who is suffering (so, everyone). I spent the majority of the show trying to figure out if the special is comedy, before realizing that it has done exactly what comedy is supposed to do: make the unbearable bearable by way of laughter.
