Up to 2020 I used to watch a lot of stand-up comedy. I guess my introduction to the genre was through Seinfeld. After that, I used to actively seek out old videos of Eddie Murphy, Chris Rock, Jim Carrey, George Carlin, and every other comic who built the bedrock of this profession. And I used to keep track of the newcomers, especially from India, because it was so interesting to get fresh and hilarious perspectives on things I encountered in my daily life. But then the pandemic happened, live shows were shut down, and all those Zoom sessions didn’t really cut it anymore. Then Bo Burnham released Inside and changed everything. Crowdwork didn’t seem funny anymore. Observations about urinals and, I don’t know, sliced bread fell flat. Jokes about the transgender community and sexist humor, which weren’t amusing to me to begin with, felt all the more crass. Burnham had set the bar pretty high, and I slowly began to realize that it was impossible for anyone to come close to it, let alone surpass it. That’s until I watched Netflix’s Bad Thoughts.
Tom Segura’s Bad Thoughts doesn’t exactly have a plot. They are a series of vignettes, some of which are told in a serialized format, while others are not. So, I’m just going to go through each of the narratives and talk about them. The first one, where Segura plays Agent Six and Shea Wigham plays his contact, seems like a mixture of The Killer and Casino Royale (the eye-patch guy looks exactly like Richard Sammel’s Adolph Gettler). But instead of being a really competitive spy, Six is just pathetic, and in his final moments, he gets to crack a barrage of poop and sex jokes. I know that that’s something that’s scoffed at by the elite critics of comedy, but the absurdity of the situation juxtaposed with the high production value, as well as the fact that Wigham is a part of the Mission: Impossible franchise and is now in this, just got to me.
The parody of Oscar-bait movies, with Dan Stevens playing Fletcher, the manager of an old-age home, and Segura playing Massimo, who injects new life into the old people there by having sex with them, is hilarious. The effort that has been put into giving it that quintessential “A24 look” is too good. I don’t know if it’s the intent of this short, but this feels like a dig at the people that have elevated that particular distribution company into their deity. It’s true that A24 wasn’t an overnight success. It took them a while to go mainstream, and they deserve the recognition they’ve gotten for picking up some out-of-the-box films and making them accessible to the public. However, nowadays they’re slapping their logo onto the most needlessly weird stories out there and hoping that people will lap it up; that’s not happening, and this segment feels like a bit of a wake-up call for them. Or maybe I am looking too deeply into it, and it’s just an overlong but well-produced sex joke.
The best short of the lot, in my opinion, is the one about the rivalry between Evan and the IT guy, Cyrus. Their conflict arises from the fact that, during a board meeting, Cyrus seems to be using the VR headset to partake in some digital fornication. But every time Evan points that out to the rest of the room, Cyrus justifies his understandably weird actions by simply saying that that’s his process of solving the server problems. In order to get back at Cyrus, Evan distributes Cheryl’s birthday cake while he is busy doing his job. This angers Cyrus so much that he builds a VR game where people can take on the role of invading aliens and do all kinds of weird stuff to a digital version of Evan. I won’t spoil the rest of it, because it’s something that you have to witness for yourself, but Segura and his team have probably outclassed Black Mirror with this story. Of course, it is insanely absurd and gross, and yet it manages to comment on everything from the pettiness of office politics to the misuse of technology to violate one’s private rights. Also, Robert Iler’s performance is amazing.
The Steven Seagal segment is just a simple reminder of the fact that this guy was briefly one of the greatest action stars in Hollywood. Then at some point in his career, he decided to let go, sexually harassed his coworkers, and badmouthed his peers. Segura’s version of Seagal bringing up Tom Cruise twice to mock him for doing his own stunts is particularly hilarious because Mission: Impossible—The Final Reckoning is releasing this week. That said, it was news to me that Seagal is Russia’s special envoy to the U.S. because he vehemently supported Vladimir Putin’s decision to annex Crimea and invade Ukraine. To be honest, anything Segura and his team of writers and directors come up with can be categorized as preposterous, but it’s a good thing that all those scenarios are fictional in nature. The stuff about Seagal and Russia has happened in real life, and it’s wilder than any of the short stories in Bad Thoughts just because it’s something that was done and celebrated publicly. You can shame Segura and his team for being gross, but at least they’re not as gross as a bunch of warmongers.
The Rex Henley short isn’t that funny. The premise of a down-on-his-luck country musician kidnapping people and forcing them into difficult circumstances so that he can make songs out of their misery is good. And the final revelation that Henley went on to murder 3428 fans to make a hit album but was never held accountable for it got a laugh out of me. The performances, production design, costume design, and the theme of ambition causing one to go to some extreme lengths were fine. But I don’t think it needed to be stretched out over the course of 2 episodes, as it kind of lost its impact by the end. In comparison to that, the school play had me in splits. Why? Well, it’s always funny to see kids make some of the most inappropriate jokes in existence. You can see this bit as the comedy series’ way of highlighting the fact that, sometimes (or maybe most of the time), grandparents can be a bad influence on their grandchildren, and that’s why parents need to put some distance between them. However, the way I see it, I think this segment shows that what was once old (and considered regressive) is becoming new again. Racism, bigotry, and every other kind of discriminatory practice in America were once looked down upon because they were reprehensible. That said, the younger generations who think it’s cool to be “anti-woke” (whatever that means) are echoing the values of the generations that should be ashamed of themselves for promoting prejudice in the name of patriotism.
The black-and-white segment in France, with Malin Barr playing Katie and Segura as Joseph as well as Brigitte, has to be a parody of Malignant. Who’s Brigitte? Brigitte is the sentient tumor growing out of Katie’s back. The premise is that Katie is the woman of Joseph’s dreams, but in order to get to her, Joseph has to satiate Brigitte’s carnal desires. And things get as gross as you can possibly imagine. But, yeah, that James Wan movie is one of my favorite horror flicks of all time, and I am so happy to see a parody of it in the wild. There was a time when we had the Scary Movie franchise to do this exact thing. The makers of that film series used to collect references from every popular horror movie and present them in their most crass form imaginable. Heck, I learned about the existence of the Scream franchise because of Scary Movie. Now, we have to rely on a comedy special by Tom Segura to do the same? I mean, I’ll take it, but it’s also sad that there’s no space for parody movies because of copyright issues and whatnot. I don’t know how Segura and his team have managed to jump through all the legal loopholes, but I am glad that they did because how else would we have gotten this grotesque masterpiece? Segura should get all the awards for playing both Joseph and Brigitte.
The Last Wish segment is funny on paper, as a cancer-struck woman, Sarah, wants her insides rearranged by Barry the Sandwich Guy, while her husband, Carl, has to wait outside the hospital room. But the writing just feels like an amalgamation of every “thirst tweet” that’s read by celebrities on BuzzFeed or The Graham Norton Show. It’s fine, but not that funny to me. Thankfully, that’s followed by a brilliant segment, which is probably every comedian’s nightmare: people in real life confronting you about the jokes you cracked on the stage. Again, I won’t go into the details because that’ll ruin the fun of watching it firsthand, but I think Segura and his team have done a splendid job of showing why it’s difficult to separate the art from the artist when it comes to stand-up comedy. There’s no suspension of disbelief going on there, even though it’s something that the comic wants you to do. On top of that, once the show is over and you are facing the people who are the butt of your punchlines, it’s tough to explain the line between your personal opinions and your jokes. When I was young, I used to take the points made in stand-up comedy very seriously. As I have grown older, I understand the difference between jokes and opinions. And it’s pretty easy to separate good comedians from hack jobs who are pushing some kind of foul agenda. Asking artists to censor what they say so that your “sentiments aren’t hurt” is a slippery slope; it’s better to be an audience that gives constructive feedback, as it improves the art as well as the artist.
The John Wick-esque segment where Tom loses his cool because the barista won’t make his iced coffee the way he wants it is fantastic. The action choreography, the stunts, the gore, and the over-the-top acting from Segura and his co-stars are just top-notch. I know that it’s a very small portion of Bad Thoughts, but I think it manages to one-up a lot of action-comedy films (at least the ones on Netflix). The final exchange between Segura and Detective Jacobs has some surprisingly deep implications, by the way. For starters, it comments on all the movies that unironically present the rage of a White man as something that’s righteous and justifiable. I mean, you can argue that it was just a coffee, and Segura’s character could’ve just opted for a different shop instead of wreaking havoc. However, it’s obvious that he kept coming to the same shop hoping for a different result. In that case, who’s really at fault? Segura or the barista? Secondly, Segura getting to walk away after committing three murders shows how differently the law treats White men. And finally, Segura’s throwaway line that it’s exhausting for him to kill three people, but not for the police, is a critique of extrajudicial violence that happens on the daily, not just in America but all over the world.
The last episode’s “slept like a homo” bit didn’t exactly tickle my funny bone. That’s all I have to say about that. However, the Hardcore Gym segment is undoubtedly the show’s pièce de résistance, am I right? It’s clearly a satirical and male-centric take on The Substance. Coralie Fargeat’s film was obviously a cautionary tale about what the search for external beauty can do to a person. Segura’s short film does the same, but the punchline is that men will throw caution to the wind in their pursuit of a giant Johnson. Given how much hoopla has been made about the fact that “size matters,” it wouldn’t be a stretch to say that maybe Segura is right, and men will risk it all just to be desired for a few days by the women and men they fancy. Also, in case you are worried about all the full-frontal nudity, don’t worry, all the phallic objects in the episode are prosthetics. In addition to all that, the moments where Segura breaks the fourth wall to talk to the audience about jobs, success, family, love, and communication are quite good, especially the scene where Segura almost shoots himself but walks back on that decision after learning that Bad Thoughts has been renewed. So, if all of this sounds like a recommendation, please, feel free to give the show a watch before someone gets offended and takes it off Netflix.
