Sarah Silverman’s father died just days after her stepmom passed in May 2023, and to honor them (as well as the comedian’s late mother), she found ways to shine a light on them while also mining the depths of her dark sense of humor. Which, as it turns out, might just be hereditary.
The Gist: This marks Silverman’s second original Netflix comedy special, joining 2017’s Sarah Silverman: Speck of Dust.
Before and in between, she had dalliances with HBO, where she won an Emmy for 2013’s We Are Miracles, and a Golden Globe nomination for 2023’s Someone You Love.
This special feels different not only because of the subject matter, as Silverman recounts her last days with her parents, but also for the fact that she mentions she filmed this hour during the middle of her tour as it stopped in New York City at the Beacon Theatre. Normally comics film at the end of a tour.
What Comedy Specials Will It Remind You Of?: Rachel Bloom’s Death, Let Me Do My Special earlier this year springs to mind, even if Silverman doesn’t burst into song this time around.
Memorable Jokes: Silverman focuses first on her dad, Donald Silverman. “Everybody called him Schleppy.”
We learn how the Silvermans moved from Boston to Manchester, New Hampshire (where Sarah was born and raised), and how he owned a store called Crazy Sophie’s Factory Outlet, inspired not so much by a real-life Sophie as Sarah’s grandmother fretted, but by the Crazy Eddie who was famous in the NYC metro area for his TV and radio ads touting insane prices.
Her father left his mark in other ways, too. Silverman often refused to pick up his phone calls just so she could save and savor his voice messages. She also stops to share her dad’s Yelp review of the dentist they both frequented. In a bit of a twist, the comedian realized she didn’t have her glasses with her because they were filming, so she abruptly asks if anyone in the audience had a pair of readers they could toss onstage for her to borrow. Oy!
As for her stepmother, Janice, thanks to her and Donald recording their doctor’s visits and sharing the audio on WhatsApp, the entire family got to hear exactly how Janice’s fatal diagnosis was crudely interrupted. Not once, but multiple times in multiple ways by Donald.
A side story about houseflies reminds Silverman of her one-and-done season on Saturday Night Live in 1993-94, where she had written a surreal yet sincere sketch for herself and the late great Phil Hartman with Hartman as an elderly fly on his deathbed. A shame we never got to see that sketch. But we do get to hear Silverman recount Janice’s final days, as well as Donald’s, with Sarah and her sisters sharing dark jokes, sometimes just amongst themselves, other times with their ailing father.
Over the end credits, we even get to see one of those moments of levity, involving a friend and fellow comic Jeff Ross.
But Sarah says her dad could give as good as he got, roasting a magician over FaceTime, and surprising Sarah by binging the rest of a Netflix series after she went home one night.
Our Take: Silverman started stand-up at age 17, and now in her 50s, she reflects that her tastes and attitudes have changed over the decades.
She’s still got a flair for a good dick joke and an ironic Hitler reference, even if in the opening minutes of this hour, she finds herself acknowledging that she’s not as up on men’s kinks as she thought she were.
But no matter how much she may mellow or soften, Silverman very much is a product of her parentage.
From her mother, Beth Ann, who died eight years ago and whom Sarah described as “exactly Diane Chambers from Cheers,” directed local theater in Manchester and became the voice of the local cineplex after she complained about the guy on the phone. It never occurred to her mother to lie, even to protect someone’s feelings. Sarah’s humor sometimes has come across as too blunt for its time. But in this time? In 2025? “If we’re lacking anything in this world right now, it’s truth, you know?” she says. “The cold hard, braless nipples of truth.”
That trait she got straight from her mother.
And then there’s her dad. This is what she shared two years ago when he died.
She also mentioned her father’s tasteless sense of humor in her previous Netflix special eight years ago.
Sarah manages to get one more dig in at her dad at the end, in an otherwise sentimental closer noting how many men have called into her podcast to rave about him, revealing how he had changed their young lives as a camp counselor. Whether it’s that moment, or a bit in which she imagines the souls or energies of the deceased watch over us, even when we’re still trying to please ourselves, that Sarah takes an additional moment to reflect. “The show is too sad and then I worry and I go to far the other way,” she says “It’s a balance.”
Whilst the “dead dad” show is such a common trope in the UK that British comics will mock each other and themselves for writing and performing them, it has yet to become de rigueur here in the States. Perhaps with shows such as Bloom’s and Silverman’s, that has begun to change.
Our Call: STREAM IT. As her late father might’ve written: “Tell ’em Schleppy sent you.”
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.