Stream it or ignore it?

He just starred in a CBS prime-time variety show, Nate Bargatze’s Christmas in Nashvillehe hosted Saturday evening live for the second time in a year. And now he’s playing to an arena-sized audience who love his family-friendly stand-up. How much bigger can Nate Bargatze get?

The bottom line: After half an hour and two hours of specials with Netflix, Bargatze temporarily defected to Amazon Prime Videobut he is now back with the streaming giant.

And he returns as the highest-earning touring stand-up in the world, with more than 1.2 million tickets sold on The Be Funny Tour, ranking him 12th in overall live ticket sales according to Pollstar.

Playing rounds in the basketball arena where the Phoenix Suns play, Bargatze’s third Netflix hour sees him take us back to his previous job as a water meter reader, revealing the depths of his love for processed fast food and just describing to us how much he relies on his wife to take care of him and make sure he stays on the right track.

What comedy specials will this remind you of? The absence of swear words, the absence of positions calling him overtly political in any way, gives him an appeal that rivals, if not already exceeds, that of the older, more established comedians you might compare him to, such that Jim Gaffigan (with whom Bargatze co-headlined a Hollywood Bowl concert at the Netflix is ​​a Joke festival in May, also alongside Jerry Seinfeld and Sebastian Maniscalco). Is it worth pointing out here that during this performance, Bargatze received the biggest laughs and applause of the quartet?

Memorable jokes: Bargatze has been doing comedy professionally for two decades, so returning to his latest work takes him back to Wilson County, Tennessee, where he read water meters for rural homeowners outside of Nashville. He jokingly recalls that in 2001, after 9/11, he and his colleagues were instructed to protect the water…from potential terrorists?! “What did they want us to do? » he asks himself now.

But his wife, with him even then, and married to him for 17 years, is the ultimate protector of the family, seemingly knowing more about him and his needs than he does. “I understand, because I don’t think about the consequences of everything,” spending much of his time on the road as a touring comedian and not having to deal with the responsibilities at home. That’s not going to stop him, however, from describing his wife as “an old man of depression”, due to her obsession with saving money on electricity, ketchup, toothpaste, and even d Trying to avoid leftover pizza from a pizza party.

If he feels like he’s playing second fiddle at home, sitting next to a surgeon at Career Day at his daughter’s school doesn’t do much to boost his confidence.

Nonetheless, Bargatze exudes the concept that ignorance is bliss, interrupted only momentarily when other people point out his lack of book or street smarts. This tends to be illustrated when he indulges in his love of fast food, whether it’s a stranger noticing the amount of ketchup he uses, or when he overreacts and shrinks at the moment when the driver’s side window does not work properly while driving at McDonald’s. -through. After taking action and describing his thought process, he reveals: “It’s the most vulnerable feeling I’ve ever felt in my entire life. »

He has apparently always had a great relationship with his parents, but finds humor in strange moments over the years; recently, when her mother showed up at the wrong address and struck up a half-hour conversation with another random grandmother; or, as a child, at the funfair, watching his magician father try to compete with the donkey who “jumps” from the top of the plunge into a small swimming pool. “It’s something you don’t think you want to see until it’s up there,” he notes, adding later, after describing the reality of the situation: “It’s not Not as fun as you thought.”

Bargatze fans thankfully don’t face a similar dilemma when watching his stand-up, which is the furthest thing from a high-flying or high-diving daredevil act.

Our opinion: You may have loved seeing Bargatze’s rookie effort host Saturday evening live last year, where his portrait of George Washington informed his American revolutionary soldiers of the new weights and measures the new United States would benefit from. But Lorne Michaels saw even more potential in the stand-up comedian. Not only by booking him to host a second time, earlier this season, but also by supporting his prime-time Christmas variety show on, as they said back then, “another network.” And Nate Bargatze’s Christmas in NashvilleEP by Lorne and written by SNL’s Streeter Seidell, Mikey Day and Moss Perricone, and featuring Day and new actor Ashley Padilla in sketches – one of which shows them playing Joseph and Mary in front of Bargatze’s angel in a note for- The game of notes on Washington’s skit, all about Christmas, shows how much they trust him. And they were ready to back it up with performances from Noah Kahan, Carrie Underwood, Darius Rucker and sketches featuring Jelly Roll and the Tennessee Titans football team, among others.

When you watch Bargatze hold court, whether at the Grand Ole Opry for the Christmas special, or at the Phoenix Arena for his latest stand-up tour and special, it’s actually pretty easy to imagine Bargatze becoming a staple of television for the next decade or two. He is simply friendly, sincere and genuinely funny.

Our call: Spread it. A lot of Bargatze’s role involves playing the idiot, but you have to be pretty astute and intelligent to make a successful acting career like he has over the past decade. You’d be an idiot if you bet against him.

Sean L. McCarthy works on the comedy beat. He also podcasts half-hour episodes with comedians revealing origin stories: The comic strip presents the latest things first.