Bad Thoughts

I'm a big fan of Tom Segura, the comedian who, in many ways, first came to prominence at the home of his friend and podcast monolith Joe Rogan, who has gone from strength-to-strength in recent years. I love his podcast with Bert Kreischer, not least the episode where he realises that his best friend is on a carnivore diet, and I'm a big fan of his stand-up comedy too. The Netflix special Ball Hog is hilarious and I almost always enjoy Segura's way of poking fun at simple everyday incidents and seeing the funny in the mundane. He's long been a slightly less dry, slightly more childish version of Jerry Seinfeld to me.

So, I've been looking forward to the Netflix series Bad Thoughts, written and directed by Segura, based on some of his stand-up, which centres on all the times he is struck by dark, murderous thoughts as a result of the most annoying situations of everyday life. For example, it could be about the pretentious barista who mixes your morning coffee wrong and responds with a rude shrug when we ask them to fix our order.

Segura dreams himself away to work as a professional killer, who accidentally shoots the wrong person and ends up in a tricky situation, to say the least, in what I guess looked super funny on paper. The basic problem here, however, is (unfortunately) that Segura as a comic actor is much, much worse than he is as himself, in the role of stand-up comedian. Significantly worse. In fact, he is not funny, at all. There isn't a line, a grimace, a retort, or a flourish of body language or gesticulation that elicits laughter here and, given that the direction is also 100% Segura-focussed, his co-stars aren't really allowed to take up too much space either. Thus, it never becomes funny.

The humour is also unabashedly juvenile, which can be funny, but not if everything is about exactly the same thing. Segura's script here is 99.99% about semen, homosexual relationships, and poo - and after a dozen or so sketches with the same stupid and clumsy ending that lacks finesse, it's easy to end up in some kind of semi-bored stage where the rest of the season just flows by, like the TV version of a regular radio rant. I will say, however, that the sketch about the beautiful French woman and her witch twin is funny and the only thing about Bad Thoughts that I appreciated. Otherwise, this is consistently poor.