'Look at You': A window into the mind of Taylor Tomlinson
A comedy special that addresses suicidal thoughts, panic attacks, bipolar disorder, the passing of one's mother, and a brutally blunt father cannot possibly be considered amusing.
These types of topics call for expertise and acuity, otherwise the audience will not be left laughing by the end. Taylor Tomlinson's latest comedy special, "Look at You'', features all of the above alongside crisp joke writing, carefully crafted act-outs, and a merciless desire for laughter.
For all latest news, follow The Daily Star's Google News channel. Her comedy persona leans into a wholesome and happy side, influenced by her Christian upbringing. Adding to that, Tomlinson also has an impeccable ability to use cultural references—like that of Harry Potter and Taylor Swift—to further her comedic strength. This offers a stable backdrop for the oddly dark swivels she sometimes takes.
Take her six-minute monologue on her mother's untimely death. She carefully manipulates, contextualises, and accents these jokes to make them suitable for the audience. One of her techniques for bringing people to laughter is to claim that it's acceptable to laugh because her mother's passing benefited her career.
"Do you think I'd be this successful at my age if my mom was alive?" she asks. "She's in heaven. I'm on Netflix. It all worked out."
Following the separation with her fiancé, Tomlinson recorded her first Netflix special. She spent a lot of time with a therapist since the break-up, and therapy is used in numerous jokes throughout the special. Tomlinson runs the risk of occasionally straying into a type of humour that doesn't completely translate to everyone, as she jokes about therapy.
The detail and depth of her assessment of her own psychology, however, is what makes her greatest bits remarkable. There aren't many jokes about how the traditional framework divides men and women, but there are more inquiries into her own peculiar personality.
Tomlinson attributes her inclination to rush into relationships on the fact that her mother passed away while she was still a little girl, and she makes many jokes about her trust issues, such as a beautifully executed set of punchlines about how she sees any gesture of kindness from a boyfriend as a scam. "Oh, is this your move?" is her usual refrain—about everything from opening the car door to staying together for six decades.
She is surprisingly agile for a comic of her age, able to switch from light to dark, clean to dirty, and polite to aggressive on the fly. A certain vulnerability might be the thing that her comic toolkit is missing. She can push right past that, and understandably so. She needs to have a thick emotional-armour since she is dealing with serious difficulties, like the death of a parent.
Tomlinson started doing stand-up when she was 16-years-old, after her father enrolled her in a class, so they could spend time together in Temecula. She began performing in clubs after spending some time polishing her craft in the Christian community, and soon she was opening for Brian Regan, winning a spot on "Last Comic Standing," and performing on late-night shows.
"Look at You" heavily emphasises on therapy. Tomlinson compares taking medication to wearing arm floaties in the water, in an attempt to destigmatize mental illness as just another human attribute like not being able to swim. "Look at You" is jam-packed with information about her experiences with depression, her recent discovery that she has bipolar disorder, and her very amusing impression of her brain during panic episodes.
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