Sarah Cooper: Everything's Fine

I love Sarah Cooper on Twitter, but I'm really not sure what this was. Interesting cameos from known stars, but it felt like a random collection of unrelated comedy skits that they tried to merge together to be a single show, but it just came out disjointed and sadly not funny at all.

My partner walked out of the room about a quarter of the way through. I stuck with the whole show, but sadly it didn't get any better. So disappointed!

Full disclosure, I am an independent who does not like Trump and think making fun of him is totally ok and should be done. However, I am first and foremost a comedy fan. Sarah Cooper is not funny. This special is not funny. It is cringe central. I gave it 1/10 because she made a name for herself without having any talent. She is paraded around and written about like there is no tomorrow but the comedy is non-existent. Just because someone is making fun of someone you despise does not mean you can sacrifice quality.

A lot of people are saying Sarah Cooper is very funny, folks. A lot of people. I wish I could tell you how many. It's a very big number. Probably the biggest number since Abraham Lincoln. Listen, I know all about big numbers. I really do. My uncle was a nuclear astronaut. I have big, burly men, truck drivers, come up to me all the time, tears streaming down their faces, asking me if that was really Helen Mirren and Aubrey Plaza. And I tell them, yes, yes, it was. And only I could tell them that. Obama never did. Only me, folks. Only me.

Have you ever wondered what they were thinking when they watched the takes during production? It seems they didn't, as surely they wouldn't have gone on. I would ask for those 50 minutes of my life back, but the whole year has been a total loss anyway.

Sarah Cooper is very, very good at conveying a great deal of tumult with her facial expressions. What always sold her Trump lip-sync videos was her range of emotions which managed to comment on the insanity of her given material without changing a word or a beat. Indeed, the lip-synching segments of the special are the strongest bits- not because she is repeating herself but because Cooper is allowing herself to be as hilarious as she really is. The weakest bits are where Cooper is playing straight man to her funny guests.

The special is both helped and hurt by the parade of celebrity cameos. Helped because the celebrities (especially Maya Rudolph and Aubrey Plaza) are such a delight. Rudolph is particularly scene stealing. But on the whole they serve to detract from Cooper's comedic voice- never by outshining it, exactly, more by distracting from it. The tonal shifts should work better than they do- the almost stream of consciousness flow is Pythonesque in a way, but that just means this might have worked better as a 1/2 hour pilot for a new ensemble sketch show rather than an hour showcase for ostensibly one person.

All in all it is worth a watch, but I think we can expect better special from Sarah Cooper in the future and I do hope we get one!