'Jeff Arcuri: Nice To Meet You' Netflix Review: Comedy, Crowdwork, & Cancer

Jeff Arcuri: Nice To Meet You is one of the best hours of comedy, and puts Tony Hinchcliffe and Louis C.K.’s stand-up comedy specials to shame. I mean, even putting Jeff in the same sentence with those two hacks feels blasphemous. But I have to, because Jeff covers a lot of the topics that Tony and Louis did, and much like Tony, Jeff does a lot of crowdwork; and he’s so much better at it. For starters, both Tony and Jeff start their respective specials with a joke about how they are not gay, but whenever someone accuses them of being so, they start acting very gay in order to put homophobic people in an awkward position. To be honest, if you listen to them back-to-back, you might think that their jokes are one and the same. However, it’s Jeff’s delivery and micro-observations that truly set him apart. There’s a sub-joke in this whole set where Jeff talks about how his dad thinks he’s gay even while Jeff is getting married, and it veers off into a slightly incestuous joke. Now, that might have been planned or just something that he came up with on the spot on the day this special was shot, but the way Jeff crumbles into the ground, as if he wants the stage to consume him, is what makes the joke land. Meanwhile, when Louis did a similar joke in his special, it was so cringe-inducing. In addition to that, Jeff knows exactly when a joke has reached his peak, and when enough time has passed to make a callback; and that’s something he does not only for the gay joke, but for every joke in the special.

Jeff talks about growing up with his sisters and how much they love his wife, Katie Thurston. Thurston was a part of The Bachelor Season 25 and The Bachelorette Season 17, so the spotlight on her relationship with Jeff was very bright. But instead of making it all about those reality TV shows or the nature of their content, Jeff goes on a tirade about the people who hated him for being her boyfriend. I don’t know if he actually did it, but I think it was hilarious when he said that he responded to all the haters by making very personal comments about their family. In doing so, this set became like a commentary on parasocialism, and I liked it a lot because it’s something that I think about a lot of the time. I mean, when you are an under-17 kid, you have the right to be obsessed with a celebrity and think of them as your friend, lover, or whatever. However, if you take a trip through all the popular social media websites, and if you see the people commenting on a celebrity’s choice of partner, their politics, or what they are wearing, you’ll find out that they are all adults who are choosing to focus on these strangers instead of, I don’t know, looking after their own family. It’s as if their bodies have grown up and they are technically doing “grown up” things, but their minds haven’t matured. And of course, the next sets that Jeff seamlessly segues into are about physical aging, nostalgia, and emotional maturity. Again, these are topics that were covered by Louis and it was grating. That said, the manner in which Jeff immerses you in his stories makes you relate with him even if you aren’t from the USA.

Jeff brings up the fact that whenever people are transitioning from one age-group to another, they do awkward stuff. He talks about generation-specific phrases and behaviors that you should have abandoned at a specific age but you don’t, thereby making you seem outdated. And then on the other side of the spectrum are people who use phrases and adopt behaviors that they are still too young to incorporate into their lifestyle. I related with that a little too hard; that’s because I have to work with those who are 10 years younger than me and also communicate with those who are 10 years older than me. So, my mind is kind of a soup of Gen-Z, Gen-Alpha, and boomer lingo. I may have actually forgotten how to be a millennial. Speaking of being a millennial, Jeff’s set about being the first generation to experience the internet in its rawest form actually triggered several memories about search histories and whatnot. I won’t go too much into details because digital footprint is a real thing, but it did make me nostalgic about the freedom we used to enjoy back in the day, and yet we turned out to be fine. And now, with all these forms of censorship (which actually generate curiosity instead of curbing it) and over-abundance of media outlets that spew government-sponsored propaganda, people are becoming more and more demented. It does make you wonder why we are becoming such promoters of censorship while we should be progressing as a species. To be clear, that’s not the point of Jeff’s jokes, but those are the thoughts that his comedy sparked in my mind (which is something that every good comedian should do).

The section of Nice To Meet You where Jeff talks about Thurston, her fight with cancer, and how it has affected their lives is extremely emotional and funny at the same time. It looks like Jeff is on the verge of breaking down into tears, but every time he gets close to crying, he lightens the mood with a joke. I won’t go into all the stuff that he talks about because I don’t want to ruin it for any of the readers who haven’t watched the set; you need to experience it first-hand, and not through my writing. What I will say is that I am in awe of the fact that Jeff has done this comedy special during such an emotional time; and what’s even more awesome is that he doesn’t make it all about himself. He centers the whole thing around his wife. In doing so, he not only presents Thurston as the hero she is, but also empowers every single person who is battling cancer or assisting their loved one in kicking cancer’s butt. I mean, the punchline of the last joke of the special (it’s in the end credits) is actually delivered by Thurston, which is so brilliant that I couldn’t stop myself from applauding it. The sad part about this comedy special is that, much like Ryan Hamilton and Taylor Tomlinson’s specials, not a lot of people are gonna watch it. Nowadays, everyone gravitates towards controversial figures like Hinchcliffe and C.K., and then they spend every second of their fleeting life defending them on the internet. Well, I hope these comedians and the fans of those comedians watch Jeff’s work and improve.