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I was worried the audience might reject a mainstream dad-comic known for working clean, but Gaffigan was ready.
The first words out of his mouth were an impression of a skeptical audience member reacting to his entrance.
Look at that shirt, he whispered, earning a solid laugh.
Few bits have reached a wider audience than Gaffigans Hot Pockets.
It contains everything that makes the comedian great.
Its four minutes and 30 seconds on one topic.
Its lean at under 600 words, and its packed with act-outs and character changes.
But to put that in perspective, Justin Timberlakes SexyBack from the same yearhas over 279 millionviews.
While hard-core comedy fans can recite Hot Pockets from memory, most people have never heard it.
Gaffigan starts Hot Pockets by confessing that he ate a Hot Pocket and felt awful.
Like most of Gaffigans work, Hot Pockets contains no swear words.
His first solution is to get mean.
Enjoy the next NASCAR event.
This hostility gives the joke some bite despite the lack of profanity.
Two seconds later, hes at it again, having lost no one.
Then he pulls his foot off the gas and lets the audience get it all out.
They reward him with nine seconds of applause at the one-minute mark.
The waiter delivers a list of negatives, and the customer gets more excited with each new horrifying detail.
He gives each speaker their own body language, switching between them with a simple change in head direction.
When the customer announces hell have the Hot Pocket!
with smug conviction, Gaffigans performance equals the best Will Ferrell sketch characters.
Gaffigan portrays the executive who first pitched the product next.
Later, Gaffigan describes the vegetarian Hot Pocket as for people who dont want meat but do want diarrhea.
With just a few lines, Gaffigan paints this powerful man as incompetent and maybe insane.
At 3:03, Gaffigan mimes following the absurd directions on the lean pocket as if he has no choice.
Gaffigans audience could not be more satiated.
Writing and performance aside, Hot Pockets succeeds because of the central observation that grounds it.
Corporations surely know when their product is trash.
Some products are so clearly trash that the most believable explanation is that its intentional.
What if the company just came out and said it?
