Nate Bargatze and the rise of Wholesome Comedy

Is comedy with a positive message ascendant?

On October 28th, 2023, Nate Bargatze hosted Saturday Night Live.

Doing so is a sort of comedic milestone, of sorts. It usually represents an acknowledgment of stardom. The accolade by SNL, whose longevity sets it apart as one of the summits of American comedy, makes this endorsement meaningful. Bargatze was unknown to me, so on the recommendation of a some friends I checked out a couple of his Netflix specials and I was struck by the fact that his comedy is very aptly described by the adjective “wholesome.” Bargatze talks about going to Starbucks and ordering an unusual drink, about seeing a sleeping horse and thinking it’s dead, and about embarrassing situations. He never uses obscenity or profanity. His show is introduced by his young daughter. In short, he works very hard at positioning himself as a wholesome comedian. Alberta (2021) in an Atlantic profile characterizes him as “inoffensive” (a seriously backhanded compliment in the world of standup) but also “one of the hottest acts in comedy.”

I had a woman say “why can't you do things that appeal to everyone”?

That’s impossible.

Bill Hicks

It is instructive to compare Nate Bargatze and Mike Birbiglia’s acts. Birbiglia’s material is just as innocuous as Bargatze’s but it is not wholesome (or at least less so). Finally, if we compare Bargatze to a “normal” comedian such as Andrew Schulz, whose act is political, sexual, and race-based it is easy to see how different Bargatze’ and Schultz’ acts are.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Schulz

Wholesome comedy is not limited to Bargatze. In fact, I would argue that Bargatze is just a very visible example of this trend. For example, there is a Facebook page “Wholesome Humor” which was started in 2020 and has 154,000 followers, as of February 2024. https://facebook.com/WholesomeHumor

In fact, even limiting ourselves to TV series, there are numerous series that I would put in the “wholesome comedy” category. The following is a sample.

The Mindy Project (2012-2017) written and starred by Mindy Khaling (an alumna of The Office);

Schitt’s Creek (2015-2020) a Canadian comedy created by father and son team Eugene Levy and Dan Levy;

The Good Place (2016-2020), created by Michael Schur, another The Office and Parks and Recreation alumnus;

Kim’s Convenience (2016-2021), based on the homonymous play by Ins Choi, a Korean-Canadian actor and playwright;

Ted Lasso (2020-2023), written and starred in by Jason Sudeikis; and

Survival of the thickest (2023), written and starred in by Michelle Buteau, based on her 2020 homonymous book.

Interestingly, Sudeikis in an interview (Respers France, 2023) stated that the Ted Lasso character “became the warm, affable, positive quote machine viewers first came to love at the height of the pandemic in 2020” as a reaction to the political tensions raised by the right wing cultural ascendancy in the 2016-2020 period.

Avoiding obscenity and profanity, while significant, is not the whole story. Obviously, clean humor has always existed. The old expression for the opposite was the term “working blue” which meant a comedy was not “family friendly.” Why “blue” and not some other color, you might ask. Or maybe it’s me, but I had to look it up. Apparently, theater censorship in the 18th century was done in blue pencil¹ and the rest is f@#$ing history. However, wholesome is not just clean, non-blue humor. Avoiding profanity is necessary but not sufficient for wholesomeness. Wholesome humor has to have a positive, uplifting underlying worldview. For example, Steven Wright’s 1985 special begins with several minutes of a desolate wasteland in which Wright is fictionally living. His comedy is anything but wholesome: “Everywhere is within walking distance if you have the time.” Kierkegaard would have been proud.

Let’s take Sudeikis’ idea literally: wholesome comedy is a reaction against the “nastiness” of the right wing comedy of trolling and 4chan. Much of that kind of humor is aggressive, often extremely so, and cynical. Take for example, mocking “Karens” or “owning libs,” to deliberately take two kinds of memes at the opposite of the “political spectrum” (Karens tended to be, in the original instances of the memes, white, privileged, and racist; “libs” tend to be socially and politically progressive); both types of humor rely on ridicule but are also cynical. No “positive” alternative is provided. The mockery is an end in itself. Shows like Schitt’s Creek or Kim’s convenience are an anthem to family values. True, they are inclusive, accepting, non-traditional values, but they are families full of love and respect. The Good Place is literally about ethics in the post-modern world and Survival of the Thickest is even from the title body-positive and presents transgender characters in a positive way (which is still noteworthy)²

---

After a long hiatus, Idle Thoughts is back. I guess the second half of the title “…of a busy fellow” might have been a hint at the irregular frequency of posting, but I have a better excuse than that: I was working on the second (revised!) edition of my first book (Linguistic Theories of Humor) which appeared thirty years ago. The new edition will be available by the end of the year. It has and additional 14,000 words and it will eventually come out in paperback.

But back to Idle Thoughts: today’s thought comes from an observation I made when presenting the work in my last book (Humor 2:0: How the Internet changed humor). The audiences’ reaction to the rather dark chapters on the alt-right nazi white suprematist use of humor was invariably to ask me if there were any positive trends, any signs that the tide might be receding. This is my answer to those questions. I am very curious to see if you (the readers) feel the same way, if you have any other suggestions (the list is not meant to be exhaustive), or if you disagree.

1. https://underthemoonlight.ca/2020/04/11/why-is-it-called-blue-comedy-anyways/

2. https://glaad.org/publications/victims-or-villains-examining-ten-years-transgender-images-television