Jerrod Carmichael Reality Show.
Guys, I cannot stop thinking about Jerrod Carmichael’s reality show. I know that it is allegedly “too much” and “uncomfortable” and “cringe.” While these things and more may be true for some or all of it, it is also true that after boycotting HBO Max for a few months for cancelling Issa Rae’s show Rap Sh!t (the Internet was loudly protesting, and even though I love Max, I am easily swayed and so cancelled my subscription in solidarity), I rejoined because I was so intrigued by this show. I was watching it during a storm and the power went out and my Internet took so long (like a few minutes but too long considering the suspense) that I downloaded the Max app on my phone and tried to watch it using my data. (It did not work, and I found myself in a frenzy trying to reconnect.)
I became a fan of Jerrod Carmichael after watching his brilliant special Rothaniel (also on Max—okay fine, they still have good stuff), so I didn’t really know him pre-coming out as gay. Those on the Internet who did know him when he was closeted find his now very much outness a bit overbearing. And it is true that Carmichael sucks someone’s toes on the show, that he is actively on Grindr and both shows the viewers his messages and the guys he hooks up with. It is true that he falls in love twice in two episodes, once—very messily—with Tyler, the Creator and then again with this guy who goes to the Iowa Writers’ Workshop (where I went! I could’ve known him! I could’ve known Jerrod Carmichael!) and flies in from Iowa seemingly often—when is he writing?!—to hang out.
Jerrod Carmichael Reality Show is a gay show, and it is maybe too much, but not because it’s gay. It is too much in the way that people who are emotional and messy and don’t mind if everybody knows their business are too much. As someone who is very emotionally private unless I trust you and even then might not give you the details, as someone who actively did not seek out romance with people I knew when I was single because of the public nature of doing that—everyone you both know now knowing about you two—I find Jerrod Carmichael’s approach to romance fascinating. He puts it all out there, and he seemingly does not get embarrassed by how openly vulnerable he is on camera and on stage (the show is interspersed with comedy sets where he basically is narrating what’s happening in his personal life and seems to be making jokes out of it on the spot).
The show is too much maybe because Carmichael wants so badly to be loved and then when he is loved, he feels so uncomfortable that he self-sabotages the whole thing. It is maybe too much because he is not talking to his mom because she doesn’t like that he’s gay, and he tells everybody this, talks about her so much—not necessarily in a bad way, more in a mad way—that it’s almost as if he’s talking to her via literally anyone else who will listen. One of Carmichael’s friends comes on the show masked and with a voice distorter to tell him he doesn’t want to participate in this twisted experiment, doesn’t like that Carmichael is making all of his private business public, and that he’s worried about him. He says something along the lines of, “I care about you beyond all this,” and this is probably the vibe of all of his friends—including Tyler, the Creator—that come on the show. I care about you beyond all of this, and also why are you doing this, but since you are, fine, I’ll come along for the ride but not by putting it all out there, not like you are. So okay fine Jerrod Carmichael Reality Show is definitely too much and everybody knows it, but this is also what makes the show what it is maybe, what makes it so hard to look away from.
In addition to the too muchness—the vulnerability and the outness that is bold and maybe a little unhinged—the editing of the show is also great. It separates Jerrod Carmichael Reality Show from reality shows (like the one a few years back about Kanye and the one a few months back about Jon Batiste) that mostly feel like hanging out with the person. This show feels like hanging out too but it also feels like a story is unfolding. The story in the first episode is the story of Tyler, the Creator not loving Jerrod Carmichael the way he wants him too, not texting him back, not being his date to the Emmys and Carmichael’s quest to find another date instead. The second episode is the story of finding someone to love him the way he wants to be loved and not knowing what to do about this love when he gets it. This is all I’ve seen so far (the third episode has yet to come out ), and even though there’s only two episodes out so far, and even though they’re only twenty something minutes each, the show leaves the impact of something much longer and more established. It is a messy show (even the title Jerrod Carmichael Reality Show feels haphazard and as bare bones as it can get, more like notes than something fully finished). It is also surveillance-y in the way that everything has become surveillance-y because of social media and Internet culture, but the show feels very different at the same time, very unique in its sort of in-the-moment, in-the-middle-of-figuring-itself-outness. As tightly as it comes together in post, Carmichael seems to be meandering, figuring out who he is, and as “too much” and “uncomfortable” and “cringe” as this process can be, it is also open and vulnerable and indicative of being in-between the start of things and something like the peak.
I get that the Internet is mad, that they don’t quite understand how someone like Carmichael can be both a Black cultural figure and this openly gay, but I feel like that’s more the Internet’s (and the people that fuel it’s) problem than Carmichael’s. You can be more than one thing—in fact, you can be very much one thing and very much another. You can do all that you’ve done art-wise, culture-wise and yearn for a love that you’re not so sure what to do with once you get it, can be in search of something ephemeral maybe, something hard to name, and in looking for it, create a mess—a spiral? a meltdown?— sell it to HBO, let everybody say about it what they will.
Image: Max
