Tom Segura’s latest Netflix special, Sledgehammer sees him talk about supermodels, injuries, parenting, and getting high by surprise.
Story
Comedian Tom Segura walks on stage at his show from Phoenix, Arizona, one of the venues in his successful comedy tour.
He opens his set with a joke on the confederate statues and what follows is a collective response that’s recurrent throughout the whole spiel — the audience laughing way too hard over what seem to be bland-at-best jokes.
It all makes sense, though, if one is familiar with the comic and his other work. A prolific comedy podcaster and a relatively well-known celebrity online, Tom Segura has a solid fan following who are very familiar with even the minutiae of his online persona.
It makes sense then, why his jokes would land so much better amongst his fans than the average viewer. This is not to say that the entirety of the material is bland. In fact, there are moments that would work for the average viewer irrespective of their knowledge of the comic.
There is some black humor here that pushes boundaries familiarly, which is to say it’s already been pushed like that, and jokes in the same vein have already been told many times.
The shock humor does work during the titular joke, though, and it’s also accompanied by Segura’s better material regarding the awkward moments that result in hilarious parenting fails. He also talks about his late father and his dying wish, which ends in another dud about an n-word joke, which just comes across as sub-par filler material.
Segura also talks about his injuries and vasectomy, and then about getting overdosed on drugs, thanks to his friend and fellow comic Zoey Diaz. The last portion of the standup is him recounting the horrific and hilarious experience he shared with his mother after getting her hooked on edibles, leading to one bad trip.
Positives
Tom Segura brings a physicality and a quirk unique to him while delivering the jokes, which really lends a lot of hilarity to the jokes even when they’re not the most well-written.
At the core of all the dark jokes and the overall toilet humor is a lot of heart and personal subjects, in the form of parents, his wife, and kids, and it does make it all sound much more natural and candid.
Negatives
Sledgehammer is not impactful at all, and not that it needs to be hard-hitting because it’s titled so, but even as an affair rife with the casual silly jokes meant to make people have a fleeting fun time, it’s just so uninspired.
There’s only so much of the legwork that the idiosyncratic deliveries and tone can do, and if one doesn’t find said deliveries funny, it’s just a whole lot of bore.
There’s little ingenuity in the writing, and the material that could have explored more candid and mature content before the punchline arrives is all littered with routine edgy slog.
Verdict
Tom Segura: Sledgehammer peaks with silly jokes that come with high improbability that they will land the same way with everyone.
Meanwhile, the jokes are weak and the edgy humor rarely pushes boundaries in a good way. The comic gets candid about a lot of personal relationships and the interactions therein, but no anecdote reveals something memorable or substantive.
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