Years ago, on a tribute to late comedian Greg Giraldo, Bob Saget spoke on how he felt when Giraldo was eviscerating him on stage. He talked about how he slunk into his chair, his shoulders sagging as Giraldo kept lobbing grenades over and over at him. I thought of Saget talking about this as I watched the life leave Tom Brady’s body during his Netflix roast on Sunday night.
Watching all the way through, you genuinely get the idea Brady thought the entire show was going to be him bro’ing it up with his football friends. He wasn’t ready for Jeff Ross to go after Robert Kraft and his massage parlor antics, which, judging by the rest of the sets, was on a very strict “DON’T TALK ABOUT THIS THING” list. He wasn’t ready for Nikki Glaser to pick up the crown that Giraldo left when he died as “best roast comic alive.” Lord knows he wasn’t ready for Tony Hinchcliffe.
All things considered, this was one of the best roasts put together since the Flavor Flav roast back in 2007. It could be due to the fact that the show was live and had an unpredictable nature to it. You never knew who was going to slip up. You got to see entire sets, unlike the heavily edited ones that were prevalent for years.
It also felt like a car crash in real time. You didn’t know what athletes were going to understand the assignment and nail it (Drew Bledsoe) and which ones were going to absolutely crash into the iceberg (Gronk, more on him later). There was a certain improvisational nature to the whole thing, and getting the guest stars to surprise everyone with their appearances is something you just can’t get when it isn’t a live event.
The Roast of Tom Brady, streamed live on Netflix, was proof that comedy isn’t as easy as some people seem to think. The cornerstone event of the Neflix Comedy Festival, the roast was equal parts “Comedy Central Roast” and the awful Shaquille O’neal roasts of the early 2000’s. The comedians did their jobs, and some were absolutely great. The athletes (the knew how to read) were competent at their jobs of reading the jokes written for them. And then Tom Brady got drunk and took the stage.
Let’s take a look at the Good, the Bad, and the Ben Affleck of the Greatest Roast of All Time: Tom Brady.
The Good
Nikki Glaser-Nikki has that perfect tenor and approach to her jokes during roasts. She knows exactly where the line is between comedy genius and overdoing it and goes right up to that line consistently. While Jeff Ross is still known as the roast master, Glaser is the best at it.
Sam Jay-I had no idea who Sam Jay was before this roast, and now i’m gonna main line everything I can find by them. On a venue this big, that was a star making performance. Sam had my favorite bit of the night, talking about having sex with Brady. Mostly known as a writer on Saturday Night Live, this should be something that propels Sam to even bigger and better things.
Tony Hinchcliffe-When they handed off the mic to Tony from the Kill Tony podcast, my first thought was “oh god, this could be an absolute disaster. Hinchcliffe almost felt like a bigger wild card than Rob Gronkowski. Then Tony went up and absolutely killed it. Theoretically, he should have been on television doing stuff like this for years. He is great at it. Maybe he turned down invitations prior to this and this felt like the spot to really make a mark. If so, then well played, because it had me laughing non-stop.
Will Ferrell-Dusting off his Ron Burgundy gimmick, Ferrell actually started off a little shaky, but started to catch momentum quickly. Ferrell can sometimes overdo it with his gimmicks, but he definitely played the hits of the character and the crowd was excited for it.
Bill Belichick-Deep down, I knew Bill was going to be great. He was going to deadpan the absolute hell out of the jokes. He is a true pro and did his job. I was disappointing at the start when he wasn’t on the stage, but he was awesome and I think he is going to be great as an analyst. Which is good because he was a terrible football coach by the end.
Kevin Hart-Kevin was genuinely good as a host, which I was not expecting. He was pretty grating and obnoxious during the Justin Bieber roast, often running around and upstaging the other comics. This time, he was more referee than anything else, and was fantastic working on the fly to bring the crowds back after some of the athletes were careening the show off the rails.
The Bad
Bill and Robert-Have you ever been fired from your job? Were you then forced to be in the same room with the boss that fired you? And then were you forced to take a shot with that boss? AND was that moment watched by millions of people? When Kevin Hart tried to bring the two together, Patriots owner Robert Kraft seemed completely fine with the idea. And why wouldn’t he? He wrung every ounce of value out of Belichick that he could over two decades, then jettisoned him unceremoniously a few months ago.
Bill looked like he did not want anything to do with sharing the stage with Kraft. Who would? But he had to because he knew it would look worse if he didn’t. He looked uncomfortable. I felt uncomfortable watching it. I hate to admit that I felt for Bill because it’s like rooting for Darth Vader in Empire Strikes Back. In that moment, though, Belichick deserved better.
Peyton Manning-Manning has hosted Saturday Night Live with success before. He is much funnier than he portrayed himself during his NFL career. The roast, though. He came off as bland. As one of the only people actively working on television on the entire show, it definitely came off like him protecting his image and not wanting to risk losing his spot doing the most casual play by play in football.
Gronk-If Rob Gronkowski simply sucked like everyone knew he would, then I wouldn’t even mention it. It is how bad he was and how off-script he obviously went, mostly because it became glaringly obvious that he couldn’t read the teleprompter. A playful dullard on his best days, Gronk had already been drinking for two hours (on stage) by the time he went up. Sticking my hand into a fire ant colony would have been more enjoyable than watching this again.
Quick story that I thought of while watching Gronk: Nine years ago, during a comedy open mic, one of the waitresses at the place we did the show occasionally went up and did comedy. One night, she went into a rambling monologue that went off the rails constantly. She got the light that her time was up, and blew past it. Then blew past it again a minute later. And again. And again. And again. All told, she was on stage for nearly 15 minutes before the people running the show flat out turned off the mic, and she had a meltdown that bounced off the tin roofs of the place. Watching Rob scream about dick jokes and god only knows what else way longer than anyone else, then spiking a shot glass on the ground causing glass to go flying everywhere is a pretty spot on impersonation of what she did that night.
Julian Edelman-I was ready to throw myself through a plate glass window if he said “bro” one more time.
Dana White-It was pretty impressive that he only got to talk for 60 seconds and still managed to spectacularly reinforce his homophobia and transphobia. He is the only person who talked the entire night who I can say with 100 percent certainty wrote his own material. White needs to walk into a moving airplane propeller.
The Ben Affleck
What even was that? Did Affleck write his own material? It wasn’t even a standup comedy bit, it was a whiny TED talk about internet culture. That’s my job. Stay your lane, shitty Batman. Instead of roasting anyone, he just spent the entire set talking about people who talk about Tom Brady online. Yeah, internet culture and anonymous commenting sucks. You know who doesn’t need to be the person using a mic to be Internet Karen? Ben Affleck.
Fancy Boys Club 