Never Not Funny is a podcast in the classic mould, featuring two regulars in Jimmy Pardo and Matt Belknap, with a weekly guest. Due to it’s age and the many similar podcasts that followed, Pardo and Belknap are often credited with popularising, if not inventing ‘the podcast,’ and whilst a little overblown, it’s an idea not without merit.
Jimmy Pardo Esquire
NNF does suffer from that eternal bugbear of being a prototype (maybe even brototype?) show: the idea that it is itself the ‘derivative’ form, and this could so easily be the case, amounting to little more than an annoying, oboxious stream of nonsense, but it doesn’t. Instead, the show carries itself with a natural brio, such a well-formed wit and exquisitely daft humour that forms the core of it’s mythical ‘NNF energy,’ and this can be put almost entirely down to Mr. Jimmy Pardo. Sure, one always need a set-up to work in, friends to work with and allies to work from, but this is every inch Jimmy’s show. This podcast is a distillation of Jimmy’s incredibly unusual, astute and quite simply natural approach to comedy. Having proclaimed to ‘never writing a joke,’ his approach is almost entirely about character. His unique delivery, formulation of sentences and ability to leap from enthusiasm, to faux-anger, to genuine heart is really exceptional. Every inch the ‘pompous clown,’ his ridiculously overblown false anger is his most easily identifiable trait, variously lunging at any and all of his show-mates. Quite often, the show feels like that Pardo touchstone: crowdwork. The light, insistently 70’s/80’s referential ribbing and chiding of everyone around him is so clean, efficient and done with such an off the cuff ease that sometimes it almost feels like magic.
Matt Belknap owns shirts
That’s not to belittle the contributions of the lovely entrepreneur, occasional barber and producer Matt Belknap or the strange duo of video producer Eliot Hochberg and intern and eighties throwback Dan Katz. Despite their roles, they do offer more than an opportunity for Pardo to practice his stage act. Adding an extra vivacity to the show, allowing Pardo an out, extra figures of fun or off-mic laughter. Belknap’s ever-improving comic sensibility is also a charming development to see, hearing him grow from a slightly uneasy contributor is another of the shows great traits, giving it that sense of through-line that a show needs to form itself into more than disconnected episodes. They allow the show to be that goal of most podcasts; to be a conversation. Matt also gains huge kudos for the show existing at all, since he was the only person able to envision this quasi-empire.
Pat Francis is using a microphone
The guests are an intriguing mix of LA podcast regulars, less famed friends of Pardo like Pat Francis or Gary Lucy to veterans of their fields, like Ellis Paul or Conan O’Brien. This lends a sense of controlled variety to the show, with the LA podcast touring company offering the most laughs per minute, cast alongside other guests offering a good, less ‘podcast’ angle. His closer friends tend to focus on relating stories from their shared pasts, freeing Jimmy to discuss the past rather than joke-spar. Whilst the bizarre and questionable bundle of excitement that is Pat Francis is a constant joy across his three or four appearance a season. The more eminent guests allow Jimmy, with his clear adoration of their worlds, to revel in their wealths of history and difference of field. His reverence and plain fascination with these arrivals, specifically characters like Mark Volman or Eddie Trunk, offers Jimmy the opportunity to step back a little, this ceding of the floor allowing the episode to cultivate a slower, gentler and more story-oriented vibe, where the show breathes and is freed from it’s occasionally cloying pursuit of jokes.
There is of course a thorny issue at hand in terms of guesting, which is the lack of diversity in the bookings. With the well versed knowledge of their first black guest not appearing until season nine (Episode 919: Aisha Tyler) and the less acknowledged fact that female guests have only appeared on twelve of the past seventy-eight episodes. Clearly there is a problem, but maybe the inclusion of non-white, non-male guests for the purpose of fulfilling a quota would belittle the guests, the enterprise and the show individually, but surely there are many unbooked guests capable of improving the show too. Pardo and Belknap obviously understand that there are funny people who are not 30-50 year old white men, so one can only come to the inclusion that it is more about the atmosphere. Since NNF is blessed with such a specific timbre, the guests do need to be either friends of Jimmy or figures he deeply respects, so as to keep the show at it’s best. There are too, issues like availability and scheduling that, as an outsider, one cannot be aware of. And to be frank, the LA comedy scene (and the podcast audience) is overwhelmingly white male and this will inevitable define who is available and considered suitable for the show.
Regardless of anything you might throw at it, Never Not Funny is pretty much the most consistently hilarious podcast you’re going to find. Jimmy’s comic ability, crafting inspired and ridiculous jokes from nothingness really is a sound to behold; and once it’s got a hold on you, it won’t let go.
You can find a free feed of Never Not Funny on iTunes, or purchase whole episodes on pardcast.com. Jimmy Pardo’s not on twitter, but freqeunts clubs primarily in the LA area, Matt Belknap is on twitter @mattbelknap, as is some kind of show feed @NeverNotFunny. That’s it, so consider your homework passed out.