Jim Gaffigan: Dark Pale

In his new special, he does bits about Starbucks, bells and diarrhea and then quilts them together. These are less like standard comic callbacks than variations on a theme. It’s the work of a pro. The only time you see Gaffigan strain is in his personal material. When he moves into stories about his childhood in the second half of the special, you wish he had a director to draw him out. Then again, his buried anger is such a source of his comedy that you wouldn’t want him to go too deep.

George Carlin might’ve beaten Gaffigan and most everyone else to the punch 15 years ago by joking about how long to keep your dead friend’s phone numbers, but only by now could you also find a comedian such as Gaffigan to remind us that strangers will invariably inherit those phone numbers, and might wonder how they ended up in your family’s group chat.