Mike Birbiglia’s ‘Good Life’ Special Isn’t Afraid of the Big Emotions
Maybe it’s serendipity that Mike Birbiglia and Sarah Silverman released their new Netflix specials just a week apart, considering that both devote so much comedy to elderly parents knocking on death’s door. In PostMortem, Silverman worries aloud that the topic is too heavy for stand-up, reflexively reaching for provocative punchlines whenever the feelings get too real. Birbiglia takes the opposite approach in his new special, The Good Life, leaning into the big emotions even when it means momentarily putting aside the laughs.
That’s nothing new for Birbiglia, whose comedy specials feel like especially funny episodes of NPR’s This American Life (and yep, the comic has contributed to that very program). In The Good Life, Birbiglia finds himself stretched thin by his dual roles as parent and son. How do you support an ailing parent with whom you’ve never been close? And how do you answer the big questions as your kids grow old enough to ask them? Nine-year-old daughter Oona came up with a stumper when gazing upon the marquee for a local smoke-and-vape shop: “Dad, what’s the Good Life?”
Birbiglia spends his Netflix hour trying to answer that unanswerable question, but takes hilarious detours along the way. The most inspired bit is a vicious takedown of Urban Air, the indoor trampoline park that sends kids to urgent care on a regular basis. (Oona breaks a foot after a few bounces.) The two facilities even sound alike: Urban Air; Urgent Care. Birbiglia signed a mountain of waiver forms to ensure that he wouldn’t sue that “fantastic company that injures children 365 days a year,” but there was nothing in all that paperwork that said he couldn’t ridicule Urban Air on Netflix.
Don't Miss
Birbiglia also gets comedy mileage from his faded Catholicism, ironic considering he was one of the comedians invited to visit the Pope last summer. The invitation seemed surreal. “Does the Pope know that if he invites a bunch of comedians,” he incredulously asked Jim Gaffigan, “that they’ll probably talk about it on stage?”
Birbiglia’s trip to Rome is a skeptical one, but he does return with rosary beads from the Pope, a gift he transfers to his devout father. “He lit up like Grandpa Joe in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” Birbiglia jokes.
“Michael, you were called by God,” whispers Birbiglia’s mother.
Not exactly, remembers Birbiglia. He was called by Jim Gaffigan, who was called by Stephen Colbert, who may have been called by God.
Whoever made the call, the visit provided Birbiglia a way to connect with his father in a way that he’d rarely managed throughout his life. That rekindled relationship also gives the comic some answers, however incomplete, to Oona’s question about what it means to live a good life.
Among comedians, Birbiglia is king of the quiet moment, never afraid to let the room get completely silent when he reaches the emotional crux of a story. It’s a tool he uses sparingly, but it’s a sledgehammer, pounding home his conclusions in ways that punchlines rarely can. There’s nothing wrong with Silverman breaking the tension with laughs when emotions get too heavy. But Birbiglia proves that refusing to turn away from those feelings, even when they’re uncomfortable, can be just as satisfying.
