Stream It Or Skip It?

Tacoma comedian Nate Jackson has TV credits, but his stand-up career has blown up in the past two years thanks to his crowd work “joints” on YouTube and clips on TikTok. On YT, 19 of his most popular videos are from his monthly crowd work shows, which he has posted since October 2023 and each of which regularly draws more than a million views. But what’s his stand-up like outside of crowd work?

The Gist: So yeah, you may have seen Jackson onscreen on cable or streaming as an actor/performer. Most notably, he played the late professional wrestler Junkyard Dog on NBC’s Young Rock, and also appeared in an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm. He also served as a writer, consultant and sometimes performer on Wild ‘N Out.

As a comic, he wrote for Leslie Jones when she hosted the BET Awards, and told jokes on HBO’s All Def Comedy, Kevin Hart’s Hart of the City on Comedy Central, and Laff Mobb’s Laff Tracks on TruTV.

The title for his Netflix debut, Super Funny, references his own comedy brand for the shows he took around Washington’s Puget Sound in the 2010s before opening his own Super Funny Comedy Club in Tacoma. As for the hour itself? Jackson does get into it with audience members in his so-called roast zone, but not before passing judgment on judgment-free gyms, and noting that white women asked for the manager centuries before there were ever Karens or managers.

What Comedy Specials Will It Remind You Of?: It’s awfully easy to lump Jackson in with another crowd-work comedian who has broken out thanks to social media, but Jackson’s agenda feels somehow deeper, weightier than his fellow former Wild ‘N Out co-star. And not just due to the massive amount of material he has dropped on YouTube over the past two years.

Memorable Jokes: Jackson knows he’s a big guy, but please don’t call him “big dog,” because he might eat you up as if you were a Crumbl cookie.

He’s not only trying to get in his 10,000 steps a day, but also going to the gym. At his fitness planet, however, he’s got a bone or two to pick with the gym’s “no judgment zone” policy, particularly when they want to pull a lunk alarm on hm for correcting a guy using the equipment improperly. He argues further about gym policies that sound more suited to a library. “They want you to lift weights and be quiet?” he asks, before adding: “The gym is supposed to be loud and wild.” Which is just enough of a pivot to get Jackson to describe how he sounds during sex, and later determine whether he would still have sex with someone who had no legs. And yes, he will involve the stool onstage in an act-out during this hour.

Jackson shifts into crowd-work mode 27 minutes in. There’s a big screen onstage behind him to show everyone else in the theater whom he’s bantering with, and at times, us viewers at home are treated to a split screen so we can watch Jackson rib and roast these audience members, while simultaneously gauging their reactions in real time.

There’s also some bonus crowd work that runs through the closing credits.

Our Take: Before Jackson gets into his audience roasting, however, he does lay down a few ground rules. First off, “you need to know that it started with them locking eyes” with him. Secondly, once he sees you looking at him and begins firing jokes your way, “looking away will no longer save you.” That’s what you get for sitting “in the roast zone.” And it’s one thing if you don’t like what he jokes about you. But Jackson pleads: “Don’t be sensitive on behalf of other people” in the audience.

Jackson makes his case by claiming that at one show in Ontario, Calif., a paraplegic sat near the front and begged the comedian to mock him. Jackson feared it at first, then got the man in the wheelchair with jokes good enough to make him laugh, which the comedian said gave everyone else in the room permission to laugh with him instead of at him. Jackson called this“the golden moment in comedy.” Not even the protestations from a white lady in the back of the room could ruin this moment. Even though she tried, he said. “Laughter heals. Don’t block nobody else’s blessings.” 

Our Call: STREAM IT. On the one hand, Jackson’s Netflix special backs up the case for stand-up as a meritocracy where you can make your own breaks through hard work. On the other hand, some comedians do’t think crowd work is actual work. The truth is somewhere in between, and Jackson didn’t get to 4.4 million TikTok followers without putting in the work and hustling to maintain his momentum. He’s earned your watch.

Sean L. McCarthy works the comedy beat. He also podcasts half-hour episodes with comedians revealing origin stories: The Comic’s Comic Presents Last Things First.