Brad Paisley’s Netflix Comedy Special: 5 Best Bits
Brad Paisley‘s Comedy Rodeo comes to Netflix on August 15th, bringing with it an hour’s worth of stand-up, song parodies and selfie jokes. Paisley pulls double duty as the show’s host and musical guest, while Nate Bargatze, John Heffron, Jon Reep, Sarah Tiana and Mike E. Winfield provide the comic star power.
“Those guys are all friends of mine, and they all fit into this Nashville sense of humor,” Paisley told Rolling Stone Country earlier this summer. “It was a fun thing to host a stand-up comedy night where I interacted with them, because I love that world — the world where you’re someone who stands up in front of an audience and has to make them laugh. In some ways, that comes naturally to me.”
It looks pretty natural, too. Paisley and company trade jabs throughout the show, and some of the best jokes are delivered at the singer’s own expense. Without giving away too many punchlines, we’ve rounded up a few highlights from the Comedy Rodeo.
Paisley roasts his home state and Beauty and the Beast‘s anti-gay protestors.
Paisley taped his comedy special in May, not long after Bill Condon’s remake of Beauty and the Beast hit theaters. Thanks to the inclusion of two gay characters, the film rustled up a good bit of controversy, particularly in the Bible Belt. In his opening monologue, Paisley puts a different spin on the movie’s sexual politics.
“Here’s this girl having relations with this … I don’t know, [a] buffalo,” he laments with faux exasperation. “And just because you put a jacket on it doesn’t make it ok.” Later, he adds, “They shoulda called it Beauty and the Beastiality. I mean, where I come from, that is … well, actually, it’s ok. I’m from West Virginia.”
Mike E. Winfield gives a dramatic reading of “I’m Gonna Miss Her (The Fishin’ Song).”
“Straight gangsta!” Winfield says approvingly of Paisley’s 2002 hit, which finds its protagonist ditching his girlfriend for a day at the lake. “He opened up the song by saying he had a tough decision,” Winfield tells the crowd, “and that’s when I realized that rich people have a different set of tough decisions in their lives. In my life, a tough decision has consisted of, ‘Oh man, am I gonna pay Netflix today, or have lunch?’ The tough decision in BP’s life is he woke up with his girl, and she wanted to spend the entire day with him, but he wanted to go fishing. What’s a man to do?”
For Winfield, though, the true highlight arrives during the chorus, where Paisley decides to choose fishing over females. “He finally comes to a conclusion where he’s like, ‘Well, I’m gonna miss her.’ What?! Oh, that’s gangsta…. He’s like, ‘I love you girl. But it’s tilapia season.'”
Paisley gets dirty with a rewrite of his own song “Celebrity.”
Walking the line between good-natured humor and bad taste, Paisley – a personal friend of former President Obama – takes a well-deserved swipe at Donald Trump during a revised performance of “Celebrity.”
“I’ll make the super market tabloids, I’ll drive a big, fancy car,” he begins, before adding, “I’ll reach out and grab them by the pussy, ’cause they’ll let you when you are … a celebrity.”
Sarah Tiana mocks Paisley’s clothing.
“I like your shirt,” Tiana says to the tightly tailored Paisley. “Does it come in men’s?”
Paisley mocks the Bible Belt again. . .with a song about incest.
“In the backseat of that Regal, what we did was illegal, because you were my first cousin,” Paisley sings in “First Cousin,” the evening’s best song parody. Filled with off-color, R-rated jabs at family members who are perhaps a little too close, the tune feels like something he might’ve brought to his rehearsals for the CMA Awards, only to have it promptly vetoed by co-host Carrie Underwood and the entire staff at ABC.