Danny Jolles Moves the Comedy Special (and Society) Forward with “You Choose”

It’s a well worn notion that subjectivity is an unfortunate inevitability when it comes to watching comedy. There are all of your experiences, beliefs, values, etc. that you carry with you when you watch someone tell jokes for an hour and that unavoidably colors your opinion of them. In many ways, you don’t have a choice about what you find funny. It’s just a guttural response, which is why it comedy is mostly such a personal endeavor, both for audience and comedian.

But, what if you did have a choice in the matter? What if you could choose the type of joke you wanted to hear? What if the same comedian told those two diametrically opposed comedic viewpoints? What if you were to watch said special from one Danny Jolles and learn that we have more in common than we don’t and reaffirm the overarching communal aspect of comedy?

Danny Jolles indeed did make a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure comedy special, truly the first of its kind with his sophomore hour, You Choose: The Full Interactive Comedy Special. Doug Benson released same versions of an hour on Smug Life in 2012, one recorded while he was completely sober and one recorded in his normal state of being functionally high (unsurprisingly, Benson is more lucid while high and has been for several years). You only got one choice there and it was pretty obvious. With Danny’s new double(?) special, each topic that Danny cleverly covers offers up a choice (via thumbnail links to unlisted videos on YouTube) of whether you want to hear Danny’s take whether for or against, new or old, or pro- or anti- David Blaine. Jolles really upped the ante from just doing his last special in six different venues to reimagining the form of a comedy special altogether.

One of many Jolles’ strengths is his writing and Danny put in the tireless work to actually develop thoroughly great bits on either side of the issue. That’s especially true when it comes to the David Blaine chunk where he spans the spectrum of thinking he’s the “best human we have” to a “psychopath”. It’s a testament to Danny’s comedic prowess that his comedic persona/lens/truth all stays in tact despite offering supposedly different bits.

The ironically unifying takeaway for You Choose comes in the ending, of which there is only one ending: Let people live their lives. The illusion of the binary that is the core dynamic of You Choose comes undone with Danny hoping that we keep the choices set around infinite and, perhaps, venturing outside of yourself to find that there might be things better than what you’ve known and loved for years and years and years.

With all that said, you shouldn’t take our word for it and go down the You Choose rabbit hole yourself, especially since it’s all streaming free on YouTube on Don’t Tell Comedy’s YouTube Channel.