Hannibal Buress has sneaky comic punching power. With his rolling, sleepy cadence, sly grin, and heavy-lidded gaze (“you squinty [expletive blurred]” reads one hate-tweet Buress reveals tonight), Buress’ comic persona looks too loose to the uninitiated, as if he’s just another amiable stoner comic content with lazy, unfocused buffoonery. Anyone lulled into complacency is brought up short before too long, as Buress’ affect hides a sharpness, an observational style that comes at you from unique angles. And when Buress reveals a genuine anger behind a joke, he can draw blood. Just ask Bill Cosby, whose current downfall can be traced without exaggeration back to the comparatively unknown Buress matter-of-factly calling the formerly beloved entertainer out as a rapist onstage. There’s society’s depressing unwillingness to credit the word of scores of women over a famous man in play there, but, while the facts were always available to everyone, it was Buress saying it that catalyzed public opinion. (He jokes tonight about “Cosby assassins” coming for him.) At first listen, Buress sounds like he doesn’t care about much of anything—which makes his comic premises carry surprising weight.
Why? With Hannibal Buress is Hannibal Buress given free rein. And while he’s gathered an impressive writers room (packed with veterans of shows like Totally Biased, SNL, The Daily Show, The Chris Rock Show, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, Conan, Letterman, Hot Package, and others), the show is very much at home to Buress’ style. In essentially every interview leading up to tonight’s premiere, Buress played it cagy as to what Why? was gong to look like, and that’s reflected in the finished product. Stand-up bits introduce filmed and live sketches, a similarity to Comedy Central sister show Inside Amy Schumer pronounced enough that Schumer herself appears in a funny bit, revealed as Hannibal’s meanest and most dedicated online troll. (“You’re trying to move in on my territory!,” snaps a crazy-eyed Amy as she swats frantically at flies only she can see. “It’s owned by Viacom,” counters Buress, trying to talk his friend down. They’re still on for lunch next week.) Buress also hints at musical guests if the mood strikes him. (The show’s theme song is from Australian neo-soul band Hiatus Kaiyote.)
Why?, in its first episode anyway, is far less structured that Schumer’s show, and more diffuse in its impact. For one thing, Hannibal—for as much as his very Buress-like spacey dentist boyfriend Lincoln on Broad City is a guaranteed scene-stealing delight—doesn’t have Schumer’s interest in playing characters other than himself. In his filmed bits tonight, Hannibal’s always Hannibal, whether tracking down Schumer’s online harasser or trying out a real-life (white) guy’s uncommunicative method of dealing with the cops (it doesn’t go well at all). Buress doesn’t seem poised to dazzle with his acting versatility on Why?, and doubles down by presenting his supposed Daily Show audition tape, where he lounges in Jon Stewart’s chair and mocks the idea that he could change up his comic style to fit that show’s more straightforward needs. That’s not a bad thing, necessarily—his stand-up bits throughout are typically good, though not his sharpest—but it does lend Why? a certain shaggy sameness of tone.
The show’s title, as Shakespearean as its tossed-off nature might seem, is key to what works best in the pilot. Buress’ stand-up operates from a place seemingly right at the cushiest heart of the observational comedy genre. Indeed, his opening segment tonight sees him not so much taking shots at current topics like Caitlyn Jenner, Donald Trump, and Greece’s financial crisis so much as prodding them for unexplored eccentricities. “Greece is gonna end up sleeping on Turkey’s couch” emerges funnier for Buress’ delivery, equating his own history with bankruptcy to the country’s in a show of solidarity mixed with tough love. Similarly, his asides about the Chicago Fire being a tasteless name for the city’s soccer team (“that was a bad time for the city”), and his discomfort with male hotel housekeepers (“go clean a general area like men do”) land better in performance than they read. But there’s a core of icy anger lurking under Buress’ sleepy delivery, and when it comes out—as it admittedly does too infrequently tonight—it’s potent.