Stand-Up's Next Act

On comedy’s growing generational divide

- ERIKA THORKELSON

EVERY TUESDAY night at a Van-couver restaurant called The Kino, comedians take the stage to work on their routines, to practise before bringing an act somewhere bigger. For a while, The Kino’s biggest claim to fame was that, one evening a few years back and before all the sexual misconduct allegations against him came to light, Louis C. K. stopped by for an impromptu set. The host doesn’t brag about that anymore.

Sometimes, Tuesdays at The Kino have meant gritting my teeth in the audience as bro comics rattle through lukewarm bits about their girlfriends talking too much or shopping obsessively. In this brand of comedy, women are, at best, aliens to be theorized about by the Jerry Seinfelds of the world; at worst, we become the objects of violent fantasies. These sorts of jokes turned me off of mainstream stand-up for much of my life, but what has kept me coming back to The Kino is the occasional bit of gold. Recently, that came in the form of a set by Sophie Buddle, a twenty-five-yearold comic whose day job is writing for the CBC’s satirical news show, This Hour Has 22 Minutes.

Between jokes about her sex life and Vancouver’s murderous crow population, Buddle isn’t afraid to poke at serious topics. She does one bit about the children of millennials: “Our kids are going to be the first generation of kids that can be whatever they want, sexually and, like, gender-wise. And that’s it — you know, we’re not going to have money to, like, feed them.” During one set, at the SiriusXM Top Comic competition, she veered into the #MeToo movement, bringing up the idea that those kids of millennials will be the first generation to be properly taught about consent.