Hannah Gadsby’s ‘Second Album’ Douglas Shows Her Comedic Intuition

In her follow-up stand-up special, Hannah Gadsby delves even deeper into the barrier between the audience and the comedian.

About This Movie:

Hannah Gadsby returns for her second special and digs deeper into the complexities of popularity, identity and her most unusual dog park encounter. (courtesy of Netflix)

Rambling Thoughts (i.e. The Review)

As she notes very early in the special, Hannah Gadsby is a comedian who wants to know why you’re here.

The Australian breakout, who made the heart-rending and mind-blowing 2018 special Nanette, is back for her second Netflix special, Hannah Gadsby: Douglas, and she knows that some people still don’t know who she is.

To be honest, that’s one of the reasons I love her work.

And let’s face it, this is my difficult second album, that is also my tenth and some people’s first. — Hannah Gadsby

She is self-aware to a point (in her first special, she talked a lot about trauma and the expectations of a comedy career), and she’s one of the few comics I’ve seen that are as highly attuned to the fact that she’s in the audience, as much as she is on stage.

Comedy is a two-way street, and she drags the thinking process behind it from behind the curtain to center stage. As someone who loves watching comedy specials, it feels like an education in funny that is also funny in itself!

Usually, the comedian knows the joke, and the audience follows along, waiting for the punchline to laugh. Here, Gadsby makes the creation of the joke part of the whole act, and it is like nothing I’ve ever seen before.

The previous comedy special was also, tonally-speaking, very fucking different (I was crying by the end). In this one, you can see the change in her; she’s a lot more confident (although she still spends a lot of time trying to calm the angries down in advance) and willing to embrace her uniqueness.

She discusses her Autism diagnosis, and instead of talking about it depreciatingly (which we all knew she would have done before Nanette), she uses it in a way that neurotypical people cannot do.

And yes, she talks about art history and TMNT again. And somehow manages to make it even funnier!

And yet, all her stories have very relevant and salient points that are fully meant for 2020, and I cannot believe that she is able to do this again after doing it so well in 2018 (at the height of the #MeToo movement).

I’ve watched it twice in 2 weeks, so that says a lot.

Standout Moments

• The entire first 10 minutes, where she lays out, step by step, what she’s going to cover in the rest of the special. It sounds like a nightmare, but she makes the anticipation part of the experience.
• A story she tells about penguins and a box.

And I’ll do that by telling a story about, uh, my relationship to a penguin that may or may not be inside a box. Uh… I can’t promise you it’ll make more sense then either. — Hannah Gadsby

Overall Rating (Yes, the Stars)

It is super weird to rate a comedy special, because what makes a person laugh is a wholly subjective matter, but for this person, who loves Behind the Scenes more than the actual act, this kinda felt like a dream come true.

Also, she named the special Douglas for her dog, and I love dogs.

Originally published at https://onereelatatime.org on July 12, 2020.