Fortune Feimster: Crushing It Review 2024 Tv Show Series Cast Crew Online
Crushing it is Fortune Feimster in classic form, delivering positive, straightforward laughs without any frills.
The Crush is Fortune Feimster’s third solo Netflix special after Sweet and Salty and Chance , and while I’m not sure it’s the best or most purely cathartic, it’s still an integral part of what’s become a grand trilogy. While Sweet and Salty looked back at Feimster’s childhood in North Carolina and Chance was about finding love with his current wife, Jax, The Crush picks up during the honeymoon phase and beyond.
Overall, it’s a nice story arc. The familiarity and continuity mesh perfectly with Feimster’s positive style, a kind of determination to make the most of a bad situation for Uno to reverse any attribute or scenario that could be perceived as negative into a funny moment or personal revelation. I like Fortune Feimster — and, spoiler alert, I like The Crush — precisely because of his laid-back, bewildered demeanor.
There’s no anger here, anywhere. And there are reasons to be angry. But Feimster doesn’t peddle outrage or grant herself heroic status because she’s a masculine-looking lesbian who has to navigate the world on that basis. It’s played for laughs . In a comedy special! Who would have thought?
Nowhere is this more evident than in an opening segment that chronicles Feimster and Jax’s anticipated honeymoon in the Maldives, where it’s illegal to be gay, via an overnight stop in Qatar, where it’s even more illegal to be gay. I loved the whole thing; it’s funny, obviously, but also revealing in the way it chronicles an experience most of us have probably never considered. And the payoff punchline is great, at least in part because it feels very likely to be true.
Anything involving Jax Crush is pretty good, but usually in a way that reminds us how seasoned Fortune Feimster is as a performer. A silent mime fight is the best example of well-rehearsed material, delivered with the confidence of someone who knows his audience and his act intimately. It’s solid physical comedy.
And Feimster seems to have a knack for simply describing this kind of comedy. There are a few extended elements that are so well-articulated that they don’t even need physical embellishment (the cemetery story in particular). You don’t notice how little Feimster needs to move to keep the audience engaged until she sees fit to launch into a performative, ostentatious stroll or something just for the sake of flourish. It hits the mark every time.
There’s a personal element to the material here, including a long section about her parents’ divorce when she was 12 and inadvertently becoming her mother’s husband afterward, but it doesn’t feel like introspection. Feimster’s self-awareness keeps her act laser-focused and tightly edited. There are no thrills at this hour, and the late callbacks to previous jokes are a great way to connect.
Fortune Feimster is just a really good comic, and Crush It proves that brilliantly. It doesn’t rock the boat, and it might not resonate one way or another like some of his previous work or grab headlines like experimental Netflix specials like Jacqueline Novak: Get on Your Knees or the wonderful Rachel Bloom: Dead, Let Me Do My Special . But it’s a reliable hour from a solid talent who just wants to make you laugh, above all else. Sometimes, that’s all you need.
