In The King’s Jester, Hasan Minhaj proves that there is no better storyteller than him

Written by ABC AUDIO on October 5, 2022

Every Hasan Minhaj comedy special ultimately is theater — an immersive dance that upends rules of vulnerability, laughter, masculinity, and perspective. In his second Netflix special, the comedian underlines that once again.

Five years ago, when I watched Hasan Minhaj breathlessly deliver comical set-piece after set-piece in his trademark breakneck speed and breathless enthusiasm in Homecoming King, I remember wondering whether Minhaj the performer came first or Minhaj the storyteller. I have the answer in 2022 as I watched The King’s Jester, the comedian’s sophomore Netflix special — Minhaj is both a performer and a storyteller. It’s impossible to choose one over the other simply because the comedian’s striking act is deceptively reflexive, existing in a space that locates humor through performance and oration. To take away one from the other wouldn’t just render the comedian’s act incomplete but it would also strip subtext away from it. For every Hasan Minhaj comedy special ultimately is theater — an immersive dance that upends rules of vulnerability, laughter, masculinity, and perspective.

Filmed at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the 36-year-old comedian begins the special with a darkly comic retelling of his own fertility woes. The camera and the joke are both on Minhaj and he responds by looking at the truth directly. Invoking former Daily Show correspondent Trevor Noah who nicknamed Minhaj and his wife “the Indian Barbie and Ken,” Minhaj drops one of his first punchlines, telling the audience “Like Ken…. even my parts don’t work.” The story then heads in several animated directions that embody the frenetic whiplash energy of its teller. Minhaj does impressions of his younger self in school; his sex-ed teacher; and then riffs on the embarassment of getting his balls checked by an overly friendly brown doctor, an event so traumatic that it forced him to consider adopting a white kid with asthma just to announce his “reverse Angelina Jolie power move.” This opening salvo speaks to Minhaj’s effortless charm as a comedian and an audience whisperer: his ability to turn shame into a communal release, earning the implicit trust of his audience in a way that weaponizes laughter as a profound act of trust.

Like Homecoming King, The King’s Jester proves to be a reminder that Minhaj is one of the rare comedians whose comedy doesn’t directly speak to or for a white audience. Over the hour-long runtime of his special, Minhaj addresses himself as an immigrant and an outsider, someone whose American identity isn’t as implicit as he’d like it to be. In that, he makes eye contact with his brown audience, speaking directly to them, instead of behalf of them. The difference is crucial, simply because the former is representation and the latter is nothing but pandering to a Western audience. Minhaj as always, has no intention of dumbing his identity down to make his art more accessible to a white audience. If in Homecoming King, Minhaj ruminated on the politics of his American-Muslim identity, then in The King’s Jester, the comedian, in his trademark self-assured style, traces the distance between his fame and his freedom of speech and the friction that both of those things are capable of having on his own family.

By now it’s clear that any Hasan Minhaj punchline isn’t just made up of sneaky delivery style or smart joke-writing. Every Minhaj punchline is as physical as much as it is verbal — their effect deepening with every gesture, changes in facial expressions, and the degree of the comedian’s ability to modulate the range of his own voice. (There’s also the big screen behind him, which acts as an effective accomplice to his act.) It’s the reason why the comedian can so easily switch from hysterical comedy to a moving moment of solidarity without any warning. It’s silly and intelligent; measured yet frantic; deeply intelligent even when Minhaj is articulating the most trivial one-liners.

Still, the biggest strength of Minhaj’s second special appears to be in the way Minhaj constructs it. Even when he turns self-praise into self-deprecation, it’s difficult to look away from the fact that Minhaj can really command an audience like no other comedian can. Most of the special is built as his professional origin story: the comedian gives us the behind-the-scenes on how Patriot Act, his award-winning Netflix talk show, was named, and a peek into the making of his infamous episode on Saudi Arabia that features a storytelling setpiece about the crown prince of Saudi Arabia that is unmatched in its hilarity. The comedian replicates his snappy delivery from Homecoming King and tempers it with his trademark affability, earning the audience’s sympathy instead of demanding it.

More than anything, the comedian builds his special like a game of jenga — escalating tension by leaning into comical absurdity. If it seemed impossible that Minhaj could surpass the overnight virality of his immensely moving Homecoming King, The King’s Jester surpasses his own expectations. A mark of a good comedian isn’t only when they know how to make their audience laugh, but also how much to make them laugh. Minhaj is the kind of comedian who has perfected the latter, knowing exactly when to push his audience and the exact moment when he should pull back, eyes all wide, so as to allow them to feel.

It’s not everyday that you see a comedian deliver a comedy special on the illusion of freedom of speech with such clarity. But then again, it’s not everyday that you get to see Hasan Minhaj release a special. Perhaps, that’s the most apt way to describe Minhaj’s comedy special — they’re ultimately nothing, if not a treat.

In The King’s Jester, Hasan Minhaj proves that there is no better storyteller than him

Written by ABC AUDIO on October 5, 2022

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ABC AUDIO

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In The King’s Jester, Hasan Minhaj proves that there is no better storyteller than him

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