Tom Segura: Sledgehammer Review: Why Did He Do THAT Joke?

What's happenin' Captain? It's Jacob here and I'm going to give you my thoughts on Tom Segura's new special Sledgehammer. Now I've stated multiple times on the podcast that Segura is my favorite comedian. I've seen all of his specials, I watch his podcast every Wednesday, I bought his book and I'm reading it very slowly because I have the Lexile of a 5th grader. So of course I got up very early on July 4th to stream his newest hour, and as a bit of a spoiler for the rest of the article, I was underwhelmed. What's this, an inferior local comic taking shots at a multi-millionaire comedic genius? Yes, that's exactly what this is. I have a few hot takes I want to go over with you guys, because this special just didn't hit the same for me, and I was honestly very upset that my biggest comedic influence couldn't deliver the way he did in Ball Hog or Mostly Stories. Anyways, here's a fat poor's opinion as to why I was a little disappointed with Tommy Bunz this go around.

Do you kn0w these men?

OK, my biggest qualm with the special right off the bat is the fact that there are entire punchlines based around Bert Kreischer and Joey Diaz. Luckily, everyone that knows Tom Segura also knows Bert and Joey, as they're best friends and all came from the same class of comedians. However, it seems like as comedians get more popular they lean more on their friends to get laughs in specials. Bert in Razzle Dazzle did the exact same thing referencing Tom to get a laugh, and it's happened multiple times with comics who are friends with Dave Chappelle. At face value, this really doesn't matter if you're a Segura fan and watch all of the podcasts and specials and whatever, but it just seems like a cop-out to me. Even the reference to Garth Brooks just isn't funny to someone who doesn't know Tom and listen to Your Mom's House. I can't go on stage and make a joke about my best friend Jason being bald, because I don't know that my entire audience has been listening to my podcast every week for years, and that's the kind of liberty that a comic that famous gets to take with their joke writing. In my opinion, that's lazy as fuck.

Where my moms at?

Like I mentioned earlier, there were a lot of inside jokes in the special that you would only get if you listen to Your Mom's House. Again, at face value, that's fine! It's a fun inside thing that only a fraction of fans get, and this special is for the general public, so there's nothing wrong with giving a nod to the podcast fans. However, if you're going to do that, why would you tell all stories that are also from the podcast? Almost every story in the special has already been told on YMH, so how are you going to include references for the pod fans and also give the fans stories that they already know? Doing stories from your podcast isn't bad either, Theo Von did that with his last hour Regular People, but he also made that special for the general public and didn't include inside jokes from This Past Weekend. It's just confusing to me why Tom would make the decision to exclude the general public in some jokes, and then tell all stories that his hardcore fans have already heard before. If you're reading this as a YMH fan, you're probably fuming by now, but don't you feel jipped out of a new hour of stand-up by hearing stories just reiterated in a different format?

Why THAT joke?

On the press tour for this special, Tom mentioned that people will be offended and it will likely spark controversy. Excellent, I love both of those things. Then I get a special that only has one offensive joke in it, and it just seems arbitrary. The joke that the name of the special refers to is a bit in which Tom is jerking off his own son, which taken out of context and put into writing sounds horrible. Don't get me wrong, nothing about this joke offends or bothers me personally, I currently have five jokes in my act that are far more vulgar. The problem for me is that it's so different from the other jokes he's doing, which makes it seem like he included this bit just to get some extra media coverage. Either be offensive and edgy or don't, why do one really offensive joke and then talk about your dead dad? If a random comic at an open mic did the exact same joke with the same cadence and everything, they would immediately get the light, and that's how you know it's a badly written joke. How long are celebrity comedians like Chappell, Burr and now Segura going to get away with writing cringy sub-par jokes and lean on their fame to bail them out? I'm personally fucking sick of it.

Don't compliment that bitch!

Even though I didn't like the rehashed podcast stories and weird kid jerking joke, I do have to give Segura his flowers here as well. The entire opening crawl of the special was captivating, and it grabs you immediately. It was shot fantastically, the circular stage was a risky decision that paid off, and his material is still better than 99% of comics in the country. His stuff about Top Dog (RIP) was hilarious, his closer was good, and I did get a couple of belly laughs out of some of his stories even though I've heard them several times before on YMH. Tom is joining the rest of the celebrity comedians at the top of the heap when it comes to getting away with jokes that don't work on merit alone, but he's still a better joke writer than most of his peers. Perhaps my expectations were just too high, or maybe I watch too many comedy specials to see anything unique about this one, but at the end of the day I would give Sledgehammer a solid 6/10. If that's low and loose, you can touch my camera through the fence!