Mark Maron’s WTF podcast has been essential listening for me ever since the COVID pandemic. He’s been at it since way before that, sixteen years in fact. His peers consider him the O.G. of podcasting.
His decision to shut things down come October, podcast wise, has nothing to do with the title of his new HBO stand-up comedy special, Marc Maron: Panicked, although it could describe the state of his loyal listeners. How are we supposed to cope with life in these hellishly stupid times without our dispiritual leader?
One wonders how Maron, 61, himself will soldier on. For so many years, his act has been all about laying bare the striped wires of his nervous system. As he says in the new special, “all I am doing in mining for gold in a river of panic.”
Well, don’t panic — pivot. Maron’s special is a carefully crafted monologue on his world and ours and while not a series of rat-tat-tat laughs there are enough of them, mixed with some hilarious highs and lows of human behaviour, all of it leading to a glimmer of hope and boyancy. Maron seems almost happy at times, with himself, with his set, even with his three crazy cats.
The special doesn’t start out that way. Maron lurches directly into the wrecking ball in the White House. Some comedians are easing back on the Trump report. Audiences are sick of that story. They want distraction from that nightmare, a night off at least.
Maron, however, gets the darkness over first to make a point. The people on the Left — liberals, democrats, the Blue States, have screwed up the resistence with a lot of buzzkill. Maron, always capable of speaking the blunt truth, lays it out there. “Progressives,” he says, have “annoyed the average American into Fascism.”
advertisement
VIewers probably didn’t expect Maron to mock the woke but he does. He hammers the Right as well, belittling the covey of macho podcasters who “bravely speak power to truth.”
A seasoned comedy craftsman, he pauses just long enough for a lot of this to sink in.
In between there are jokes about Robert Kennedy and the threat to places such as Paris and the rest of the planet. But it is a tough opener. This should not put any true fan of Maron’s off. He openly admits he’s always prided himself on daring to lose the room in an aggressive way just to see if he can win us all back.
That’s not all that is going on here though. Jay Leno was recently quoted suggesting the decline on ratings for The Colbert Report and late night TV in general was not just due to changing viewer habits or the rise of Tik Tok but also had something to do with the content. Basically people don’t watch late night talk shows to hear a lecture.
Maron might immediately reject, as John Oliver did the other day, any comedy help from Leno. This point about progressives driving American voters over the fascist cliff, however, ouch.
Once he has everyone’s attention, Maron pivots the rest of the special towards his own inner demons. Subjects include his declining posture. How the California wildfires panicked him to seek a safe harbour. His adventured herding his three waring cats, Charlie, Sammy and Buster.
He winds things up with a personal story he says he probably shouldn’t tell. Nothing in this 75 minute set, however, is accidental. That goes for the back wall of the BAM Harvey Theater in Brooklyn, N.Y. an unrestored wonder that envelopes the comedian in colours of rust and toffee.
And that’s the wonderful thing about it. Maron has found a way to take all his neurosis and mine it for comedy gold at time when we’re all a little edgy and unsettled. He’s aged well into his roadie looks and seems almost, well, happy by the end. And why not? Very effective as an actor a few years ago in GLOW, he has a cool roll opposite Owen Wilson in the AppleTV+ golf comedy Stick. He is currently shooting scenes as Bruce Springsteen’s music producer Chuck Plotkin in an upcoming movie about the rock star titled, “Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere.” As a writer and director, he has another movie project in development.
So maybe do not panic What The F–ers. If this self-proclaimed damaged guy can make it through this current storm, if he can find life beyond podcasting, maybe there is hope for the rest of us. In the meantime, check out Marc Maron Panicked, available to stream now on demand on HBO Max and on Crave in Canada.
