Brett Goldstein Isn’t Afraid to Say ‘Men Is Bad’

It’s unfair to say that Ted Lasso pulled a full bait-and-switch on its audience. But it is probably true that a lot of people who tuned in to watch a sitcom in which a clueless American tries to coach the sport every other country calls football weren’t expecting it to become a meditation on mental health, particularly men’s. One of the people steering those stories both on- and off-camera is Brett Goldstein, who was hired to write and then got cast to play Roy Kent, the AFC Richmond player so tough he makes a dick-punching joke in the series premiere. It’s possible that there’s no way to talk about toxic masculinity that will be audible to the people who most need to hear it, but Goldstein may be better suited than most.

Goldstein has been performing stand-up comedy for quite some time; his first of his several shows at the legendary Edinburgh Fringe Festival was in 2010. But Ted Lasso launched him into another stratosphere — a level of fame that got him invited to Joe Biden’s White House a couple of years back, which he mentions early in The Second Best Night of Your Life, his first stand-up comedy special, which premieres on HBO Saturday night. Goldstein knows a significant segment of the audience will know him only as Ted Lasso’s Roy Kent, and he doesn’t shy away from material about his connection to the show: how his new financial circumstances have affected his commitment to the “tax the rich” marches he formerly attended enthusiastically; that he knows the White House story isn’t particularly relatable even when he complains that he was there for nine hours without “proper food and drink” to save the taxpayers money: “I didn’t eat or drink at all beforehand because I assumed we were going to live like kings, which I do appreciate is the exact opposite reason for that building existing.” I admire his restraint in not reviving the post-Season One conspiracy theory that “Brett Goldstein” doesn’t exist and that Roy Kent is entirely CGI. 

By far the topic Goldstein has the most to say about here is that, as he puts it, “men is bad.” He acknowledges that he is one, but says being in the same category as the “men” who “is bad” gives him a clearer understanding of what it’s like to have been German during the past 80 years or so. (A tag about high-five technique sideswipes Elon Musk, carbon-dating the taping for future generations.) Goldstein says the only solution is to “kill all the men” by tossing porn and sex robots into the ocean and trusting that men will willingly walk in; as long as Goldstein can be kept as a mascot to supply “a little pot of cum” as needed, he’ll be fine. I’m not sure I agree entirely with Goldstein that saying the phrase “little pot of cum” with a British accent in America makes it sound like a fit title for a children’s book, but I’d rather hear him say it than someone from Baltimore. (Sorry, Old Line Staters, but this can’t be the first time someone’s told you something like that.)

For now, Goldstein spends time at the gym nearest to his home, an excessively “testosterone-y and cheese deep-dish” facility where he sometimes chats with a man who trained with Shaolin monks, and gained the ability to kick Goldstein in the face. This gym acquaintance adds that now if he gets into a fight with a civilian, he has to warn them three times that he’s a lethal weapon before he can engage; Goldstein comments, “Nothing would escalate a fight quicker than someone saying ‘I’m a lethal weapon.’” What Goldstein’s like in a fight — or why he’d never get into one, if that’s the case — feels like a gap it would be useful for him to fill. 

Changing minds and hearts starting with his own may be hard for Goldstein when, as he recounts, male friends sometimes “share” things that make you wish you hadn’t invited it, like the guy who told Goldstein that when things get to be too much with his wife, he’ll “go down an alley” and “get sucked off by a whore.” Goldstein doesn’t want to shame him but knows that men are supposed to call each other out on this stuff, and gently corrects him: “Mate. We don’t say ‘whore.’” There’s nothing particularly radical here — pandering to women with male-feminist talking points will always at least get you clapter, but it would likely hit different coming out of the hypothetical woman Iliza Shlesinger recently imagined lecturing about “patriarchy” than it does from Goldstein, who looks like he should be collecting gambling debts in a Guy Ritchie movie — or possibly for real.

In fact, Goldstein’s classic hard man looks belie his soft and squishy core. The special’s title plays off what he says was the actual best day of his life: when he got to guest star on Sesame Street.

People warned him at the time that life wouldn’t get better than that appearance, and he confirms that it’s true, and will have to say so to any future children he may ever have if they ask whether their birth was the best day of his life: “No. Obviously not. Have you met fucking Elmo? ‘Cause I have…. And if Joe Biden had had Flamin’ Hot Cheetos, you’d be number three!” Goldstein’s favorite day at the gym he hates was when The Beatles’ “Yesterday” shuffled up on the playlist: “I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a man lift weights wistfully.” He claims he wants to follow up Ted Lasso with a show called MDMA Fighting, in which you dose two combatants with the drug and let them loose into the cage to lie in each other’s arms and gaze up from the floor wondering, “When you think about it, is it all a cage?” 

Goldstein is shocked early on to notice a child in the front row who says he’s 12; Goldstein tells him, “You’re going to learn so much,” and suggests that when he talks to his therapist about this night sometime in the future, he should remind them that Goldstein meant well. And sure, this interaction falls in between Goldstein’s defense of the word “cunt” and his explanation for why he doesn’t like to 69 (“It’s sex, it’s not Cirque du fucking Soleil”). But the special is mostly quite earnest and unobjectionable. If I were that child’s mother, I’d be most concerned about him adopting Goldstein’s habit of dressing exclusively out of the dryer and never putting his clothes away in drawers.

Before we even see him on stage, Goldstein puts on his most gravelly tone to narrate his intro: “I always admired American stand-up specials. The way the comic always seems so cool, smoking a cigarette even if they don’t smoke. Pulling up outside of a packed venue with not a care in the world. Time for me to show everyone what the fuck I’ve got.” This smash cuts to a stage manager finding Goldstein nervously puking into a toilet backstage, then riding up in a Severance elevator, then passing a puppet who wishes him luck on his way out in front of the audience. After the set, Goldstein walks out with half a dozen puppets, including the one we saw earlier. 

I agree with Goldstein that elaborate intros to stand-up specials are self-indulgent, but if you’re trying to make that joke with an object lesson in why they’re a corny waste of time, you need to make sure it doesn’t push your own special over the hour mark. But generally, this is a pleasant, unobjectionable introduction to Goldstein’s mind and interests. I wouldn’t want a future special to be more toxically masculine, but maybe now that he has this one under his belt, he’ll feel a little freer to make like his mate and share something that might alarm us.