The Comedians: "Good Stuff!" - video recording reviews

USA Today (Society for the Advancement of Education), May, 1997 by Robert S. Rothenberg

Buena Vista Home Video / 50 minutes / $14.95

Many of the hottest comedians in America today received their first national exposure doing stand-up on "The Tonight Show." In this compendium of television debuts, a parade of fresh-faced youngsters who had their first moments of fame after a generous introduction by host Johnny Carson do a few minutes of their routines, hoping they will lead to even greater things. In many of these cases, the next decade would bring triumph.

In shows stretching from 1981 to 1991, such current household names as Jerry Seinfeld, Drew Carey, Roseanne (then still Barr, before becoming Arnold, and finally a single name proving sufficient) and Garry Shandling strive to win the audience over with their best material, nearly always giggling nervously along with the viewers. Routines are not overly sophisticated, for some reason almost universally focusing on jokes dealing with fat, as does Louis Anderson's self-deprecating humor. Watching, the tendency is not so much to roar with laughter as to whisper to oneself, "My God, were they young!" Seinfeld, in particular, looks fresh out of high school.

Equally fascinating are the performances of a handful of comics who are vaguely familiar to most viewers who have seen them on "Saturday Night Live" or doing guest shots on other people's sitcoms. Their routines tend to be a little more hard-edged, somewhat off-the-wall, and sometimes, as in the case of Victoria Jackson lying on the floor reciting a poem about the life of a rug or doing cartwheels and flips in the midst of her monologue, downright bizarre. Bob Nelson's punch-drunk boxer strikes the most discordant note, being even more politically incorrect now than it must still have been in 1987.

While uneven and not uproariously funny, this video will amuse and fascinate viewers interested in what their favorites were like when they first hesitatingly stepped in front of a national TV audience to show their "good stuff."