Even if you're a Norm Macdonald fan, you have to admit: Netflix's Norm Macdonald Has a Show is a disaster

The Hollywood Reporter

Norm Macdonald is an acquired taste. Yet Tim Goodman, who says he's been a fan of just about everything the SNL alum has done, found his new Netflix show to be lacking. "Norm Macdonald Has a Show, his new Netflix series, is pretty terrible," says Goodman. "It's labor-intensive to get through. In the moments when it's disastrously bad, you wonder if that's the joke; given that Macdonald is notoriously adherent to anti-jokes and anti-stories as a conceit, it's at least a possibility. But no. Netflix basically thought the concept of his podcast — Norm Macdonald Live, with co-host Adam Eget, who reprises his role here of laughing uproariously, often without cause — would make a good show. And since Macdonald frequently mentions Netflix's Ted Sarandos in the premiere, it's quite possible this series lives because Sarandos liked it and said sure, why not, which is an operating principle that has worked way more often than it has failed over at the streaming Death Star."

ALSO:

• Norm Macdonald Has a Show was built to feed the needs and reinforce the perspective of a single person: Norm Macdonald
• It feels more like a freewheeling podcast that got filmed for posterity
• Too many of Macdonald's guests have ties to Netflix
• Macdonald excels with sometimes provocative questions -- "Do you miss cocaine?" -- while Jane Fonda's episode is one of the best TV episodes of the year
• Macdonald was smart to shun topicality on his show -- because, as he learned this week, topicality gets him into trouble
• Macdonald admits he's out of step with comedy -- he has yet to watch Seinfeld, 30 Rock or "The Amy Poehler show"
• Macdonald always wanted a talk show. "I thought I wanted one," he says. "It’s fun, but once I got it I realized how difficult it is"
• Macdonald was wrong to denounce Hannah Gadsby's Nanette without watching it because, like him, it's similarly idiosyncratic
• Macdonald's initial #MeToo disparagement proves that the world stage has always belonged to guys like him