An opening sketch for comedian Matt McCusker’s Netflix debut finds him waking up next to his wife (has he mentioned she’s black yet?), seeing his two kids, getting tripped up by looking at another woman on his walk, killing a homeless guy in an ensuing altercation, getting tazed by police and inciting multiple fights (winning and losing) on his way to the gig. Relatable!?
The Gist: For those of you who haven’t been paying close attention to the career of Shane Gillis, McCusker is the Matt of Matt and Shane’s Secret Podcast.
When Gillis got hired and fired from Saturday Night Live in the fall of 2019 based on jokes and comments he’d made in their podcast, the pod’s popularity soared, making them both quite wealthy thanks to Patreon subscribers. Gillis and McCusker subsequently moved to Austin during the pandemic, where they’ve been performing as part of the outer orbit of Joe Rogan’s Comedy Mothership when they’re not touring separately or recording podcast episodes together. He also has appeared in a couple episodes of Gillis-starring Tires, playing Max the cop.
McCusker self-released his first stand-up special, The Speed of Light, on YouTube, where it has racked up almost 4 million views since August 2023.
For his follow-up on Netflix, he finds himself at 39 reflecting on life as a married guy with two daughters, just not trying to screw everything up.
What Comedy Specials Will It Remind You Of?: Are you upset about Bill Burr performing for the Saudi royals? Here’s a younger version of a white guy with a black wife who openly cops to wanting to lash out at his wife and kids (but doesn’t!) that might be up your alley.
Memorable Jokes: Having been with the same woman for a decade, McCusker finds himself telling the kids these days that they have it easy on the dating apps. Remember how it used to be, fellas? Having to go out to bars and “summon the insane amount of coverage” to jump on the dance floor next to a strange woman? “I’m glad we don’t do that anymore,” he says.
The title for his special comes from a bit where he wonders about the protocol for getting naked in the gym locker room. He’s certainly not like the old naked guys he sees, who he claims tend to also be the most repressed homophobes. Still, though, he puts pressure on himself (metaphorically and literally) to make his penis look presentable before disrobing; hence, his “humble offering.” Somehow he pivots backward thousands of years out of this to imagining ancient Greek mathematicians having sex with their male students, then to pedophilia, where he imagines Clint Eastwood facing off against a pedophile, before noting that as a father of two daughters, it’s all underpinned by a very real concern of his.
Perhaps the most overtly political bit McCusker has concerns the homeless population. Sure, he jokingly kills an unhoused guy in his opening sketch, and during his stand-up, quips about enjoying Lime scooters because he can speed past the homeless, or even, gulp, use them for speed bumps?!? But seriously, folks. McCusker does feel bad for the unhoused (whom he likely encounters outside the Comedy Mothership on the streets of downtown Austin), saying: “and nobody knows what to do, that’s the worst part.” One idea he’s heard, converting vacant shopping malls into housing, doesn’t sound right to him. “We have that, it’s called jail.” Not that his own mocking suggestion is any better: He’d employ them to replace the shopping mall mannequins!
Underneath it all, however, despite all of the podcast notoriety, he wants you to know he’s socially awkward. “I’m actually an introverted guy, believe it or not,” he says, before describing to us how his anxiety manifests in typical situations such as a party. Roll the clip!
Our Take: Actually, I take back the notion that McCusker’s only overtly political bit focuses on the homeless. Because he does have a joke, that lands so much harder thanks to the timing of the Riyadh Comedy Festival, about taking us wife “on a surprise honeymoon to Saudi Arabia,” adding: “Just straighten her ass out once and for all.”
Although he jokes about bringing up the fact that his wife is black all of the time, most of his subsequent material (aside from mentioning how out of place he felt visiting his in-laws on Chicago’s South Side) revolves around more basic longtime married couple issues, the likes of which you’d just as likely see on a network sitcom. He’s horny; she’s not. She’s demanding. How demanding is she? Enough that he feels at times “like a Tesla robot,” awaiting further instructions. When she suggests a couple’s massage, it’s not the fantasy he envisions, but a nightmare in which he’s unable to achieve a happy ending. He’ll never cheat on her, though; rather, he’ll take his impure thoughts and “use my evil for good.”
There are moments where McCusker toes up toward the line of offensiveness, only to turn back. A bit where he gives bad financial advise includes a supposition that there’s no real penalty for avoiding paying on your debts, dismissing the actual rule as Jewish. He mentions trans people for a hot second, but only to make his point that he believes young people who come out as “regular gay” have to work harder to shock their parents.
McCusker would much more welcome the Burr comparisons, it seems.
He confesses to wishing he’d have “more of my life figured out” by 39, only to realize: “I’m just as confused as ever.”
He puts his own worries into perspective, both by gender, understanding that women feel insecure about their entire bodies whereas men fret about only the size and appearance of their sexual organ; and by age, where he wonders not only about the impacts of allowing his young daughters (ages 3 and 5 at the time of filming) to spending multiple hours each day on their iPads, but also feels as though he uncovers new layers of how little he understands with each passing decade of his own life.
So much has happened in his life since Gillis’s SNL scandal upended it, ultimately so much for the better. McCusker has a wife and two kids and a life for them in Texas where his worries are so much different than when he was 21, or even six years ago at 33.
It even allows him to even say something as hopefully banal as this: ‘’I’m not going to sugarcoat it. There’s horrible stuff happening all the time. I feel like it’s up to you as an individual to, like, find something you love that brings you joy and just get into that every day. Don’t get lost in all the negative news coming from every side.”
Our Call: STREAM IT. Whatever you think you know about Gillis and McCusker, watching their stand-up makes you appreciate that they’ve remained somehow detached from the rest of the edgelord comedy that’s driving the Austin scene into the forefront of social media culture since the pandemic. McCusker may not wind up being the next Burr, but it’d be nice if he tried.
Sean L. McCarthy works the comedy beat. He also podcasts half-hour episodes with comedians revealing origin stories: The Comic’s Comic Presents Last Things First.