Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Colin Quinn & Friends: A Parking Lot Comedy Show’ On HBO Max, Talk About A Tough Crowd

While some comedy clubs reopened across America this summer, the regular haunts for stand-up comedians in New York City remained closed due to pandemic regulations. Since many of the nation’s greatest stand-ups live and work in NYC, that presented a problem. One solution? Drive-ins! That’s what Colin Quinn not only predicted, but also put into motion with his friends for HBO Max, in a showcase that for some of them, was their first time back onstage since March.

COLIN QUINN & FRIENDS: A PARKING LOT COMEDY SHOW: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: About a week after New York City businesses, including comedy clubs, began shutting down in mid-March, Colin Quinn had a bright idea.

Quinn reads his Tweet aloud in voiceover to open the HBO Max special, adding: “I love stand-up, and I love stand-ups. And this COVID shut us down good. You thought you got rid of us, didn’t ya?”

Not so fast. So Quinn roped Vos into hosting a showcase for them and the titular friends, who included Rachel Feinstein, Sam Jay, Bonnie McFarlane, Keith Robinson, Chris Distefano, Marina Franklin, Dan Soder and Robert Kelly, for a performance this summer for 40 cars full of people at a drive-in cinema in Brooklyn, along the East River looking out to the Manhattan skyline.

What Comedy Specials Will It Remind You Of?: HBO Max did just release another outdoor, socially-distant, COVID-tested stand-up special with Chelsea Handler, but her audience at least still sat around tables. This is the first drive-in comedy special we’ve seen (although more have been filmed by other production companies this year already), but it might remind you as much of Colin Quinn’s old Comedy Central talk show, Tough Crowd, than of any proper stand-up special.

Memorable Jokes: With 10 comedians performing over the space of only 48 minutes, that’s not a lot of time for any individual stand-up to shine. Besides, as Franklin mentioned in a bit included in the trailer, Quinn urged all of the comics to only tell new jokes for this taping. So the more memorable quotes and moments come from each of them remarking on just how ridiculous their situation is. From performing to cars, to standing outside by the East River,  to dusting off the rust of not performing in a few months.

A running theme throughout is who will bomb hardest.

“This is exactly where I thought it would end,” Kelly cracks, evoking a real-life parallel to This Is Spinal Tap.

Distefano reminded us how silly our problems of 2019 seem now, arguing about plastic straws and whatnot. Although he worried about getting in too deep on any of the big issues of today, saying: “Since March, it’s like I don’t even know what I can say at all anymore! You’re just going to get destroyed, no matter what.”

Franklin joked about yelling at people who wouldn’t wear masks, and noted that she could be considered a “Karen,” noting “Karen has no color…I complain a lot!”

Feinstein wondered how she would counter all the misinformation her firefighting husband receives at the fire station.

Soder compared sneezing in your mask to soiling your pants, talked about how we’re not able to visit our grandparents during the pandemic, and served up a zinger against the entire comedy community in the face of what it’s like for them now. “For the past like two decades, comedians have been sucking our own dicks being like, ‘We’re artists!’ This is clear that we’re just mentally ill people shouting at cars.”

McFarlane noted the irony of encouraging honking from strangers in cars.

Robinson joked about how looting was tougher back in his day because everything high-tech was also too heavy to carry, but also poked holes in the theory that all cops are patriotic.

Jay, who just released her own solo hour on Netflix, had new material about how going on vacation during the pandemic made her feel like a supervillain, and how she felt about watching videos of white people getting beat up for saying racist things.

Kelly found relief in knowing he wouldn’t have to attend any weddings during the pandemic.

And Quinn blamed the pandemic on the nerds for leaving science for computers, while blaming America as a whole for turning its back on intellectual pursuits. “We’re not the intelligent country. We’re like the enthusiastic outdoorsy kind of country.”

Our Take: You really don’t need my take, this time. Honest. That’s because Quinn includes backstage commentary from himself and all of the other comedians throughout the hour, and they’re more vicious playfully ribbing each other than I would ever be.

At one point, Soder observes: “Bobby (Kelly) looks like Kingpin trying to find Spider-Man.”

Even before the show starts, they’re giving Quinn the business about booking a parking lot, about his direction, about the conditions, about everything. Quinn gets Kelly to go off about having to go last, and how that’s a tough spot for a comedian doing topical material, even without the added pressure of performing for a physically and emotionally distant audience.

Even so, you can see how much joy the comedians have just sharing the same physical space with each other, that they’d do this gig even if it weren’t being filmed for HBO Max.

So it’s vital that they find ways to keep performing live comedy to live human beings, somehow, someway.

As Quinn notes in his closing voiceover: “We can do this show, but it’s not sustainable, because we need the audience more than any other performing art. Because if you’re rambling and not getting to the humorous part, you feel the boredom and impatience, so it helps you rewrite and edit. Which is part of joke-writing. Also, the tension of the silence between laughs is a necessary part of comedy. It’s gotta have a build, or there’s no release.”

Our Call: STREAM IT. Forget watching comedians in cars getting coffee. Watch them perform in front of cars for gas money. It’s much more entertaining for us and for them.

Sean L. McCarthy works the comedy beat for his own digital newspaper, The Comic’s Comic; before that, for actual newspapers. Based in NYC but will travel anywhere for the scoop: Ice cream or news. He also tweets @thecomicscomic and podcasts half-hour episodes with comedians revealing origin stories: The Comic’s Comic Presents Last Things First.

Watch Colin Quinn & Friends: A Parking Lot Comedy Show on HBO Max