The Strangest Moment in Ricky Gervais's Career

He started taking himself way too seriously, he's a sad little man now.

Slazenger Kincaid

I've always had a really weird feeling of dissonance between how much I love the Office, Extras, and the Ricky Gervais podcast, especially in my teens when I was properly getting into comedy. Vs how annoying and unpleasant he can be - like you say, he's a hacky stand up comedian, he's overly sincere and self righteous in interviews, and now he's anti trans. It bums me out and makes me feel weird. Especially since loads of his good comedy is about making fun of arrogant and awkward people! I wish he'd see people liked him because he was funny and drew out interesting parts of daily life, not because he's the smartest guy in the room and all of his thoughts on philosophy and politics are worth listening to for hours.

Long Otter

Ricky Gervais always seemed very insecure to me. I think he's very uncomfortable being in a room with other "funny people." I think that's why he falls back on being "smart" because he knows he peaked a long time ago. He peaked with his TV shows were about him playing characters that you could laugh at as well as with, when he didn't take himself so seriously. Season 2 of Extras was fantastic, I will never forget David Bowie spontaneously writing a song about him being a sad little man who sold his soul and getting a room full of people to sing along.

Slazenger Kincaid

I was thinking this at the time too. Like gervais in that video felt so out of place. He was the most contrarian for no reason while the other three guys were on the same page. Like why is he so defensive about how "sittin on a cock cuz I'm gay" is funny? Even as an undergrad at student in my improv club I thought it was pretentious, and it only aged like milk from there. I dunno... this was at the time when I was expected to find Ricky gervais funny, but when just juxtaposed with these three actual geniuses of comedy (RIP Louis CK) I just couldn't even pretend. It feels astroturfed in retrospect. Uh, thanks for reaching into my memory hole and pulling up some of my deep lore. I'm glad I'm not the only one who noticed how weird those two moments were.

Jacob Freedman

WAH DO AH HURT THE ONES I LOVE

Kaivalya Hariharan

I remember on Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee, Seinfeld and John Oliver described comedy as “a sequence of words that you know has a laugh at the end of it.” It can definitely be a relief to think about comedy as inherently meaningless

I fell asleep during Ricky Gervais’ most recent special. Unfortunately not before his set about trans people. I really wish comedians would stop using trans people as part of their act if it’s just to make fun of them. It’s never funny, always predicable and it just makes the comedian look pathetic. Why are comedians so obsessed these days with making trans people the butt of jokes? I mean, I get trans rights are a hot topic right now, but if they’re just going to slander a marginalised group for 15 mins then maybe they need to re-assess their craft.

Emma Cook

Gervais and a lot of his work has always come off as fairly self conscious, and this special at the really cemented that fact for me, and it has only gotten worst as time goes on. And his statement about not want to be ‘just funny’ to three long time working stand-ups is such an odd stance to take for this conversation.

I thought I was the only person obsessed with how pathetic and intolerable Gervais is in this. I legitimately think about it all the time.

Between "WHEEERE's the FINAL WAAAAAR?!?!" and "DOES HE DEW THE WHISOAH?!" I demand you do an impression in every big joel video from here on out

Mike Kachur