Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Seth Meyers: Lobby Baby’ On Netflix, Where The Late-Night Host Mostly Keeps It Within The Family

Late Night host Seth Meyers leaves his desk and his suit behind so you can get “A Closer Look” at his first stand-up comedy special, Seth Meyers: Lobby Baby, on Netflix.

SETH MEYERS: LOBBY BABY: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: A tease about a “Skip Politics” button may have greased the wheels on promoting Meyers’s first comedy special, but truth is there’s only seven minutes out of 61 devoted to political jokes for you to skip, and Meyers tags the chunk with a line designed to persuade you into rewinding to hear more of his takes on Trump.

After all, Meyers reminds us that he delivered the keynote address at the 2011 White House Correspondents Dinner (remember those?) in which both he and President Barack Obama mocked then-Apprentice star Donald J. Trump, and which later, according to some theorists, provoked the real-estate developer and failed casino owner into plotting his own successful bid for the presidency in 2016.

But Meyers devotes the other 54 minutes of his set to his wife, children, and parents. This is a comedy special about family, even if all of the language might not be family-friendly, so to speak.

What Comedy Specials Will It Remind You Of?: Neal Brennan, a longtime comedy buddy of Meyers, directed the hour. Lobby Baby is no 3 Mics, tho. You may also detect a hint of John Mulaney (a former coworker of Meyers at Saturday Night Live) in how Meyers presents himself in relation to the rest of his family. They both lean in on the aspect of having close relatives who work in the law, for instance, and how that sometimes plays into domestic discussions. But Meyers makes this wholly his own, removing himself from his Late Night wardrobe to give viewers “A Closer Look” into his life, as it were. Sometimes even closer, as Brennan often employs a camera perched low in the front row to frame Meyers in a tight shot from above.

Memorable Jokes: Meyers fills us in on his family life, joking about how he dated his wife for five years before proposing to her (“You cannot bring a woman who is expecting an engagement ring to Paris,” he advises after learning the hard way) to how he fumbled his way through much of the wedding planning, to how he and his wife have adjusted differently as parents after having a second child.

There is, naturally, a big chunk devoted to that second childbirth, which happened in the lobby of their apartment building. At the end of his retelling, Meyers jokes that one of the 911 responders quipped “Guess you got your monologue for tonight.” Here, for your pleasure, was that monologue in its original form:

As for the political jokes, Meyers makes the case that, in fact: “The jokes are the only good part about living through the Trump era. The only good part.”

As a late-night TV host, he says pedestrians or bystanders think Trump has made life great for him and for comedians in general. To Meyers, though? “I feel as though I’m a gravedigger in the Middle Ages.” He also compares it to repeatedly visiting a proctologist for a prostate exam and not caring about the results? I don’t know about that. But Meyers receives a bunch of applause breaks during the hour, so much so that he even earns one for a joke he claimed kept bombing in other cities. He turns that into a recurring callback: “You never know. Give it a chance in Minneapolis.”

Our Take: Watching Seth Meyers debut on SNL back in 2001, I certainly wouldn’t have expected him to evolve into such a strong stand-up comedian, but here we are. Meyers truly blossomed once he left bit parts in sketches to take over the “Weekend Update” desk, and has continued growing as a monologist and stand-up during his years hosting Late Night.

There’s a bit in his first Netflix hour in which he describes one of his father’s mischievous schemes to get work done on their property. Meyers also says he wants to emulate his dad as a father. He’s already proving he’s good at the mischief, too.

Our Call: STREAM IT. You’ll never look at this late-night TV host the same way again. And that’s a good thing.

Your Call:

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 Seth Meyers: Lobby Baby on Netflix