Horses Sleep Lying Down
Out of all the comics showcased on Netflix’s The Standups, Nate Bargatze was arguably one of the funniest. Combining relatable content with fantastical stories and a dry wit to boot, Nate’s 30 minute stand-up was a great way to open the series and proved to be a tough act to follow. Now given an hour to showcase his comedic prowess, Nate Bargatze returns with 45 minutes of new material and some updates on his previous content to close the show. After an introduction to the stage from his daughter, the stand-up begins with a story about weight loss and golfing. This long joke works well to ease the audience into his style of comedy before shifting across to talking about birth names. This ties in nicely to one of several recurring topics here; airport travel. After some trademark Nate sarcasm, he moves on to talking about climbing the third biggest mountain in the world, stopping in the process to talk about dead horses. From here, Nate moves on to talk about his marriage before referencing beats about airport travel and horses again, tying everything together with clever consistency. There’s a nicely worked segment involving arguments in marriages too which Nate somehow manages to tie in to the family dog passing away. The penultimate part of the stand-up then moves over to discussing Nate’s first memories in life along with several jokes about his Dad working as a magician and clown. The final part of the stand-up does feel a little underwhelming, especially given some of the material before. In this segment, Nate discusses climate change and recycling before dedicating the final 13 minutes or so to updates with his previous stories told in The Standups. It’s an interesting segment but one that ultimately doesn’t do the rest of the stand-up justice, ending on a somewhat anticlimactic note. Still, given the content that is here, Nate Bargatze certainly proves he’s worthy of an hour stand-up special and for the most part, the content here is well written and delivered with his trademark wit and sarcasm. The stories flow naturally into one another and the recurring jokes work well to keep everything consistent and thematically relevant. Tennessee Kid may not be the best stand-up out there, with the catch up material at the end not quite working, but there’s enough here to make Nate Bargatze worthy of an hour stand-up special.
