4 One-Liner Comics Worth Your November, From Steven Wright to Anthony Jeselnik
No stories, no crowd work, no 20-minute bit about a divorce. Just one sentence, then another, then a laugh, which is how the good Lord intended it.
By the Heckle Desk · · 2 min read
The modern stand-up special is a long walk. A comic comes out, tells you about his father, tells you about his therapist, takes a sip of water while the music swells, and 70 minutes later you have learned a great deal about grief and laughed perhaps nine times. It's a fine way to spend an evening if you'd also enjoy a funeral.
The one-liner comic is a different animal. He gives you a setup, a turn and a laugh in about the time it takes a mule to change its mind, and then he does it again. It is the hardest trade in comedy and the worst paid per word, since a man can burn through a whole notebook in one set. Here are four who did it best, with the hour or album to start with. Old jokes are like old dogs: they don't do anything new, and you love them more for it.
- 01
Steven Wright: When the Leaves Blow Away (Comedy Central, 2006)
Wright's first stand-up special in about 16 years, filmed in Toronto and aired on Comedy Central in October 2006. Its audio became the album I Still Have a Pony, named for his 1985 debut I Have a Pony, and it was nominated for a Grammy. Wright delivers every line like a man reading his own obituary and finding a typo, which is to say perfectly.
- 02
Mitch Hedberg: Mitch All Together (Comedy Central Records, 2003)
Recorded in May 2003 at the Acme Comedy Club in Minneapolis and released that December, it's the last album that came out while Hedberg was alive. He told jokes about escalators and hotel curtains as if he'd only just noticed them. Start here, then try Do You Believe in Gosh?, the 2008 album his widow, Lynn Shawcroft, titled from a line in his notebook.
- 03
Demetri Martin: The Overthinker (Netflix, 2018)
A Netflix hour stuffed with one-liners, a guitar, a harmonica and a big pad labeled, helpfully, 'drawings,' on which Martin narrates charts and poorly drawn figures. Some critics found it exactly what they expected, which in Martin's case is the compliment. He is the only comic who could make a pie chart feel personal.
- 04
Anthony Jeselnik: Bones and All (Netflix, 2024)
Jeselnik's third Netflix special, filmed at the Pabst Theater in Milwaukee and released in November 2024 as a celebration of 20 years of jokes nobody's mother should hear. It runs about 51 minutes, which is short, because each joke is built like a trapdoor and there are only so many floors. If Wright is the sleepy uncle of the one-liner, Jeselnik is the nephew who'll inherit everything and smile at the funeral.