“The Roast of Tom Brady” was more like a raging inferno.
Airing Sunday on Netflix, the show was filthy and vulgar. It was inappropriate and shocking. It was uncomfortable.
I absolutely loved it.
Kevin Hart came out of the gate like a hopped-up Lawrence Taylor with a microphone — not breaking legs, but pulverizing egos. The funnyman didn’t even bother with niceties or foreplay. He immediately clobbered Brady for his endorsement of now-disgraced FTX, joking about why the roast was being held at the Forum in LA and not the nearby Crypto.com Arena.
“We didn’t want to remind Tom’s fans of how much money he owes them,” said Hart “He f–ked those people.”
What followed was over three hours of unrelenting and close-range fire aimed at the seven-time Super Bowl winner and anyone in his universe.
There were white jokes, black jokes, gay jokes, Jewish jokes. Jabs about CTE, eating disorders and Brady’s former Patriots teammate Aaron Hernandez killing people (including himself). Everyone and everything was on the menu — including Brady’s failed marriage to Gisele Bündchen, his rumored hair transplant, pal Rob Gronkowski’s IQ and ex-coach Bill Belichick’s unemployment.
Brady only threw one flag: When “Roastmaster General” Jeff Ross roughed Patriots owner Robert Kraft over being busted at a massage parlor on charges of soliciting prostitution, the former quarterback told him, “Don’t say that sh-t again.”
The rest, however, was a free-for-all.
It was also a catharsis.
The roast — which featured comedians Nikki Glaser and Tony Hinchcliffe along with Brady’s former teammates Julian Edelman, Gronk and Drew Bledsoe — felt like shedding decades of political correctness.
Comedian Andrew Schulz ripped on the former gridiron warriors in attendance: “This stage has seen more head trauma than a Kennedy on the campaign trail.”
In a culture that genuflects before celebrity and touts a phony “be kind” credo, this was, refreshingly, a night for thick skin.
Jerry Seinfeld recently noted that left-wing scolds fearing offending people have ruined television and film, which is true.
We used to laugh at and with each other. We were better friends for it.
Now, award shows have become so benign and boring that even a harmless crack about Jada Pinkett Smith’s alopecia made Will Smith think he was justified in slapping Oscars host Chris Rock in 2022.
But Brady — who, at times, borders on cyborg level perfection — took brutal jabs on the chin, like one from Glaser about his breakup with ex-girlfriend Bridget Moynihan, the mother of his eldest son.
“Tom, you’re the best to ever play for too long, you retired then came back then retired,” Glaser said. “I get it, It’s hard to walk away from something that isn’t your pregnant girlfriend.”
Humor at our own expense can be a miracle salve for personal pain.
That point was well made by comedian Marlon Wayans in the New York Times last weekend, as he defended off-color, cutting humor as a means of coping with death and pain.
“It’s a different way to look at something tragic,” Wayans said. “I think the world has forgot how to laugh. We’re grooming people to be sensitive. But I find when I’m in a comedy club, people like to laugh. They like to laugh at those dark things … People want to laugh again.”
If the reaction, both in the audience and online, meant anything, Wayans was right.
When someone can laugh at themselves, it has a humanizing and disarming effect.
This is something people like Will Smith and the criminally humorless Prince Harry and Meghan Markle should consider. Three hours of roast jokes about any of them might be just the image makeover they all need.
