Save this article to read it later.
Find this story in your accountsSaved for Latersection.
ComedianJerrod Carmichaelsnew show is obnoxiously compelling.
What is the point?
Why dawdle with all of this sad-sack stuff?
How much does the absorbing spectacle of his own personality and pain eclipse his ability to care about others?
She looms over the early episodes as a figure Carmichael longs to speak with and feels deeply wounded by.
But before long, his patience grows thin.
Does he know?, an audience member asks when Carmichael says hes cheated on his boyfriend.
They play like theyre offering strangers a window into Carmichaels life.
And theyre scenes of self-definition and self-expression for Carmichael himself.
Carmichael depicts the reality show as a slippery form of amends.
Anonymous is there to express the folly of this entire endeavor.
This is not truth.
This is narrative that will be edited by someone, and the editing will all be choices.
Carmichael pushes back: The cameras can be like what God is.
What is wrong with exhibitionism?
Theres public and private, and then theres masturbatorily public, Anonymous says.
Its a worthwhile provocation.
Viewers cannot parse how much of any of whatJerrod Carmichael Reality Showdepicts is the truth.
How much of the wedding story is true?
You dont have to really care about any of it if its all just a performance.
And occasionally, those scenes regardless of the truth of them are transcendentally powerful.
But it only pulls this off when the show gets its head out of its own very charismatic ass.
Thank you for subscribing and supporting our journalism.
