What comedian Maria Bamford really wants is the approval of her parents.
That's not armchair analysis.
In the "Special special special!," which she released online at chill.com, Bamford performs an hour of stand-up for her mother and father as they sit on a couch.
Bamford walks into her living room wearing a leather jacket and grabs the microphone, her name in lights behind her. She shouts as if she were trying to reach the rafters in a sold-out arena. Then she shifts seamlessly from grand to intimate, thanking her parents for coming. You see her mom nod pointedly and her dad raise his arms as if to say: No biggie.
It's a scene that is both oddly natural and preposterously bizarre. The same could be said about Bamford.
With her sensible smile, dyed-blond hair and Minnesota accent, she comes off like a soccer mom from a campaign ad. No doubt this is why Target placed her in a series of commercials.
But she has earned a cult following after a decade of accomplished stand-up, daring in form, that involves blunt jokes about depression and her mental-health struggles and a dark David Lynch-like interest in what lies beneath.
Bamford's family has long been an essential part of her act. She tells jokes that rely heavily on her impressions of her sniffling mother, her sister forever biting her nails and her father mumbling robotically. Her voices, shifting with alacrity from high to low pitches, can seem like manic riffs. But these are fleshed-out caricatures she has developed over years.
