MOMENTS OF TRUTH
Jerrod Carmichael Reality Show is a riveting — and risky — experiment
Jerrod Carmichael Reality Show Crave
Jerrod Carmichael is exhausting.
That's not a condemnation. It's the hypothesis being tested by Jerrod Carmichael Reality Show, Max's experimental and frequently unflattering docuseries in which the charismatic comedian, actor and director embarks on a quest for something like radical honesty by living his life (largely) on camera. “Cameras make me feel more comfortable,” Carmichael says in the first episode as he stares directly into one. “I like this. It feels permanent and it feels really dumb to lie. I keep saying I want to live more truthfully and I find myself alone a lot and I can't tell if it's because I'm telling the truth.”
An alert from the Grindr app interrupts this meditation on permanence, solitude and what truth-telling might have cost him. Carmichael's focus drifts. He looks at his phone. “Whoa,” he says at what he finds there, fully derailed.
That wry little scene doubles as a demonstration of how perfect fidelity to the truth can produce anticlimax instead of the epiphanies and breakthroughs for which Carmichael longs. It's dull to watch a person vanish into their phone. It is, however, inarguably “honest:” This is indeed how we live. That authenticity isn't always entertaining — or cathartic — becomes one of the problems the series tries to solve. The lesson here, if there is one, is that Carmichael's first real encounter with himself yields the opposite of self-discovery. What we observe instead is an ambitious and charming but flawed (and horny) human getting distracted, by a stranger on his phone, from his own mission statement.
As confessional television, the scene is a cheeky failure, albeit one containing some clues about how Carmichael's theories about the examined life might fare when put into practice. In front of cameras. For TV.
The first episode picks up in the immediate aftermath of Carmichael's Emmy-winning special Rothaniel, in which he comes out as gay in the course of processing his father's infidelity and his frustration at his mother's unwillingness to hold him accountable. He's famous, rich and joyfully, unapologetically sexual, but he's also feeling disconnected and lonely. Some threads the series takes up are new: Getting ghosted after confessing his feelings to someone. His own shortcomings as a friend. A well-meaning but possibly misguided effort to coach a fellow comedian into embracing a process more like his own.
Other topics will be familiar to Carmichael fans, including his newly strained relationship with Cynthia, his extremely religious mother (who believes homosexuality is a sin) and his well-documented anger at his father. That the latter has fuelled much of Carmichael's work puts a curious spin on some of the newer material; in particular, a storyline in which Carmichael searches for love, finds a kind and supportive boyfriend and then repeatedly cheats on him — sometimes immediately after a counselling session.
The backdrop to all this is, of course, Carmichael's evolving relationship to his family. Reeling from the irony that the disclosures that earned him accolades have also cost him the bond he and his mother once shared, he brings her up constantly in interviews, pointing out that she might be watching. Cynthia looms over the whole enterprise as its true intended audience. We, the viewers, are a pretext. And an excuse to misbehave.
Carmichael's other target has always been, and continues to be, his father — from whom he wants something like the Platonic ideal of a conversation, one that will transcend their history, retroactively heal his mother and leave him feeling satisfied and respected, with his questions answered and psychic wounds salved by the kind of full, sincere apology that makes forgiveness possible.
The show snaps into savage focus, therefore, whenever either parent is on-screen. Neither can live up (or down) to the outsized place they occupy in Carmichael's standup, or philosophy, or heart. They're homophobic, certainly. Also soft-spoken, polite and out of their depth. They are, in their own way, trying. One can't help but feel for them when Carmichael pressures them for a heartfelt and authentic encounter while strangers shove his show's cameras into their faces to capture their reactions.
That was never going to work, but the confrontations are nevertheless fascinating to watch. So are the show's nerdier reflections on the camera's changing role. Carmichael's early shorthand for this project (“I'm trying to self-Truman Show,” he says at one point, referencing the 1998 film starring Jim Carrey) registers a desire not just to live more truthfully but also to generate a transparent record of the attempt.
Carmichael's buoyancy and openness save the show from feeling dour or hopeless. The fits of conscience that anchor a series notable for its moral and artistic ambition can't get too precious or navel-gazey; they're constantly tempered and undercut by the comic's equally formidable sense of play. Jerrod Carmichael Reality Show peaks when it leans into those maddening human paradoxes.
The Washington Post