7 of the most fearless comedy specials you might have missed this year

Purists may argue with our lumping in Bloom’s Off-Broadway one-woman show with classic stand-up sets. Well, plenty of straight-up comedians produce sets that are essentially long-form storytelling, and nobody complains. Also, and this is important, who cares? I’d rather watch the star and co-creator of the dearly departed “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend” process the death of her longtime musical collaborator Adam Schlesinger in song than endure most comedians’ attempts to do something similar. Few can do that quite well, but even fewer can deftly transform their experience with pandemic-era grief into a dark, nimble songbook that includes a lullaby to her newborn daughter with the refrain “Please Don’t Die.”

Brennan opens his special with what he says is terrible news for anyone there to support a “fellow traveler” in hinterlands of depression: “I feel pretty great!” This refers to his previous inward-looking Netflix specials “3 Mics” in 2017 and “Blocks” in 2021. “Crazy Good” is a more classic stand-up effort to scrutinize the lunacy of the world around us. His material ranges from his conflicted relationship with social media to his impatience with the prevailing tendency to view comics as moral authority figures — i.e. we’re taking the opinions of clowns seriously; that’s a serious problem. (Yeah. No kidding.) At the same time, he also posits that massive talent is often the result of some kind of mania, making society’s insistence on lionizing those people misguided. “Look, you do your best with the mental health stuff. Therapy, medication, whatever you’re gonna do,” he says. “Just know that if you don’t get there, some of the greatest things that have ever happened on Earth were created by psychopaths and drug addicts.” Brennan is neither (as far as we know!), and here’s hoping he keeps riding his positive mood.

Given her high profile within Netflix’s comedy stable, it’s surprising Buteau didn’t score a Globe nomination for this. She has a new season of “Survival of the Thickest” on the way, co-starred in an acclaimed movie, “Babes,” and capped a stellar 2024 run by recording this special at Radio City Music Hall, becoming the first female comedian to do so. (Not to mention the joy she continues to offer as “The Circle” host/narrator.) We’re obligated to be careful with what we say beyond this, owing to the review embargo on “A Buteau-ful Mind,” which premieres on New Year’s Eve. But it merits including in a list of worthwhile 2024 stand-up because it’s a smart, entirely welcoming conversation starter for all the right reasons, placing a neat bow on the “her-story” she makes simply by deservedly taking up space on that stage.

Some very famous comics are basically trolls. Others are experts at dispensing with trolls. Edelman, though, took on his Internet haters in a different way, creating a list of antisemitic accounts (under a title that is the ultimate troll) that some interpreted as a handy way to stay in touch with each other. When one posted an open invitation to meet up in Queens to talk about their “whiteness,” Edelman decided he’d show up too. (“As an Ashkenazi Jew, I have questions about my whiteness!” he joked.) This Emmy-winning special chronicles what happened in that meeting, from the banal to the hysterical. It also inspired him to consider a few revelations about himself, including his reflexive empathy, tendency to be overly accommodating and a love of pastries. Edelman’s adventure is more enlightening than frightening, reminding us that this hatred can’t be reasoned with, but it’s also lazy and can be disempowered by leaning on our humor and humanity. “[T]here’s a huge part of me that genuinely walked into this room thinking, ‘They’re just antisemites because they haven’t met Alex yet!’” he shares near the show’s close. By then you’ll understand why he felt that way. Edelman explains he’s only telling us things he thinks we’d enjoy – and he’s right. We do.

This special’s title is inspired by an extended bit from Kerman’s days as a teacher, when he was ruthlessly heckled by a student to a degree that he envisioned sidesplitting dark fantasies of what he would do or say to shut her down if he weren’t a responsible adult. Kerman’s easy, bright smile and genial energy make it easy to picture him as a nurturing sort – which he is, revealed in his detour through jokes about marriage and fatherhood. This may be weird to say about a comedy special spiked with punchlines only a professional can get away with, but the top strength of “Bad Poetry” is that it feels cozy. Kerman and his director John Mulaney chose to stage it inside a Chicagoland icon, the Green Mill, producing an intimate feeling as opposed to the grandeur of a large concert hall or stadium. This plays into our sense of Kerman’s familiarity since he’s popping up on more and more shows these days, the latest being “English Teacher” and his director’s live variety experiment “John Mulaney Presents: Everybody’s in L.A.”, which he also wrote for. But he’s also some version of that guy who lures us into dropping our defenses so that his increasingly bizarre gags take us by surprise. By the time he launched into his memory of crashing a softball game for his birthday, I’d guffawed myself to exhaustion. If this is what Kerman achieves with his first special, he’ll probably knock us out the next time.

Kinane is the second comedian on this list whose latest special dives into the pandemic’s acceleration of our unreality with a creatively oblique approach, starting by boiling down the “Fast & Furious” franchise to its aggressively stupid essence before making pointed jokes about MAGA wingnuts decrying socialism while enjoying a national park. The meat of its 71 minutes covers Kinane’s move from Los Angeles to Portland with his partner, and his neighbors’ imagined distrust of a childless couple whose recycling container is full of empty baby food jars and booze bottles. All this circles back to Kinane’s cat, Dirt Nap, a creature that’s equal parts wonder, horror and wreck, kind of an avatar for America writ large. Kinane is never that obvious and serves his political digs in sprinkles. And you may appreciate the expertise with which he narratively wanders, sometimes in a way that feels like he’s jumping dimensions, only to return to a place in the story that lets you know he was never lost. 

Novak approaches fellatio in her Emmy-nominated special in a wholly unique way, starting with her narrating the way she walks onstage toward the microphone. Where most performers make sex jokes their closer, Novak barrels through a 91-minute ode to the single act of going down on someone. And when we say she tears apart the subject from root to stem, we aren’t kidding. “Get on Your Knees,” directed by Natasha Lyonne, transforms all the associations we attach to our bodies into an epic statement primarily composed of feelings and thoughts about our genitalia. The bulk of it dances with the metaphorical imagery attached to sex and what those popular terms imply about virility, strength and capability. Frequently Novak questions the accuracy of the words we use to describe our sexual organs. (“I mean, if I had a pebble in my shoe, I’d probably stop on the side of the street and take off my shoe and shake it out,” she says. “If I had a tiny, ‘rock-hard’ boner in my shoe, I think I’m just going home.”) Then she moves on to dissecting the intimate act, an honest and absurdist voyage through memory, personal history and experience. It’s a marvel that Novak remains consistently entertaining as she engulfs us with her rapid-fire poetic delivery and joyful pantomime. Maybe not, though; since this a celebration, what’s not to grin about?