Mining for Gold in a River of Panic

In the first 2 minutes of Mark Maron’s new stand-up show Panicked he dismisses 50 million of the American electorate. Within 30 seconds he has called Donald Trump a “sociopathic huckster clown king,” Elon Musk an “autistic billionaire technofascist,” RFK Jr “definitely the shittiest Kennedy,” and Stephen Miller an “actual Jewish Nazi.”

It’s clear that he simply does not want to talk to Trump supporters who he regards as “shills and stooges, grifters, collaborators, and unf***able hate nerds.” It’s a fascinating, if bewildering, move for a comedian whose set is still, mostly, not about the political situation. The show closes with a far more nuanced and personally affecting imagining of an anti-woke comedian.

At 61, Maron is in a transitional moment. He followed up his announcement that he is ending his long-running and incredibly popular “WTF with Marc Maron Podcast” with this new HBO special, a documentary about dealing with grief after the sudden death of his partner Lynn Shelton (Are We Good?), and an ongoing role as Mitts in the AppleTV+ series Stick.

Panicked is not a departure from his previous stand up, though. Fans of his previous specials Too Real, End Times Fun (2020) and From Bleak to Dark (2023) will recognize recurring themes: apocalyptic politics, personal grief, and neurotic intensity not to mention “all varieties of shittiness.” Panicked transitions from casual rants about Trump and his cats into theatrical storytelling complete with character work, and physical flourishes.

Maron has what he calls “intrusive catastrophic thinking.” In his podcast that manifests through intense scrutiny of how the worst could happen. And it plays out through his primary comic mode of loathing, sometimes aimed at himself, sometimes at others, playing with the sense of how people are making the worst happen.

But beneath the resentment, Panicked is mostly about anxiety, grief, and growing old. Most of the show is spent talking about his cats and his life: childhood abuse, end-of-life care for his father, and evacuating himself and his cats during Los Angeles wildfires. The most moving bit of a show that veers from anger into sadness tells of a spiritual epiphany that he had while hiking to a Taylor Swift song. In the context of looking after his own “recently demented” father, he confronts a near-death experience.

Although it’s implicit, Maron’s substance lies in this constant perspective taking. What actually matters? He knows that his jokes aren’t going to suddenly cure Nazis (by making them realize that they have daddy issues or are secretly gay). How do we deal with the big things? Take care of our aging parents. Face down death. Laugh through the panic.

He blames his one-issue comedian colleagues who voted MAGA because they felt like they were not allowed to use the “R-word.” He wants to know whether the “destabilization of the global economy, rise of authoritarianism, actual suppression of speech and rights of women and LGBTQ people” was “worth it you f***in’ retard?” He skewers Theo Von’s jackass racism by imagining him interviewing Adolf Hitler on that podcast: “Do you want to apologize to all the Jews, here on my show? No. I get it.”

But he also blames his progressive base for their “buzzkill.” He has internalized progressive guilt and now even his favorite soy milk comes with shame. He used to be delighted about the drink. He loved the taste and the sustainable sourcing, but found from a fan that some people were boycotting the product because of the owners’ politics. So now, after weighing all the considerations, he still drinks it – he just doesn’t enjoy it anymore. Maron says that this “buzzkill” has “annoyed the average American into fascism,” which is both a critique of himself and his crowd, but also of any “average American” who confuses the scale of the problem and the gravity of the solution they have chose

It’s not Maron’s metaphor, but it’s like voting to give a billionaire your expensive car to sell for scrap because the air conditioning is making an odd sound. Unfortunately, Maron aims the show squarely at the people who already agree with him. Which means 50 million others — who might otherwise benefit from his insights and laughs — are likely to bail before minute three. It’s a shame that he shapes the audience so that “average Americans” who tune out might miss 70 minutes of thoughtful and crotchety, but deeply human, comedy.