If you were a fan of Patriot Act and you cried when the show was cancelled in 2022, Hasan Minhaj invites you to its funeral—The King’s Jester. He returns to Netflix after two years with his comedy special that promises secrets and all the key details that we missed about the making of Patriot Act.
The King’s Jester is a homage to Patriot Act, with its animated story telling, immersive camera work and smooth graphics. It shows that Minhaj has identified his style and audience.
Hasan’s eye for political satire stems beyond his time at The Daily Show. The special brings in moments from his childhood, and the culmination of his national and religious identity in Irvine, California. His quips, the various characters he adorns and his stage presence only proves one thing—Minhaj has been waiting for the right time and place to tell his story.
What follows with every joke and whacky imitation of buff Chads is a hard-hitting fact of his political and social reality. Minhaj manages silky smooth transitions, from his petty hate for jacked up Kumail Nanjiani to his sudden imitation of Craig Monteilh, who tried to force a false confession out of teen Hasan. For a moment you’re laughing at his Big Mouth-esque voice acting and the next you’re left unsettled in your seat.
PowerPoint comedy
Hasan’s “PowerPoint comedy” is significant. In the act of laying out factual information about Craig Monteilh, Jamal Khashoggi and Alden capital, he doesn’t waste time convincing his viewers with sermons and talk. His statements of facts are the end goal and the jokes he serves on the side are just water to swallow the uneasy truth. Minhaj is merely the facilitator for the audience to arrive at reasoning. Not only is this his great return after the ‘Kings’ tried to shut him down, it’s also a performance of vulnerability. Minhaj is also strategic in his approach.
From the opening 15 seconds, he places himself at the altar for the sacrifice. He gets extremely personal from the get-go. Revealing fertility woes that the Brown Barbie and Ken face, he delivers his much meme-able punchline, “Like Ken…. even my parts don’t work.” For after placing himself at the butt of the jokes from the onset of the show, Minhaj sets a precedent for the audience—especially his Indian audience. His lead-by-example technique softens the blow that his Indian audience might feel when he pokes fun at our unapologetic staring and the abundance of Patels.
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Why the show sticks
Unlike Homecoming King, Minhaj amps up the stakes for The King’s Jester. Drawing from the title alone, it’s all about power play. And in terms of material, he has used his privilege of having a platform to optimum use. And that is precisely why it is a satisfying watch. He bites back by reclaiming his previous artistic decisions and by extension—his personal identity. His scandalous personal secrets tell of his eagle eye view of not only himself, but also of his social political environments—immediate and also far-reaching. While some of the references he flags might distance Indian viewers from the story briefly, the shots he fires in the political landscape are smartly inserted and lend an almost universal applicability. With the ban on Patriot Act episodes, the cancellation of the show, Alden capital’s lawsuit, the silencing of political satire would remind viewers of similar events occurring back home. And Minhaj doesn’t stop for a second, to collect sympathy tokens. He’s onto his next self-attack.
He fixates on vulnerability and stretches it across the show and reveals it in multiple forms. In 2019, TIME Magazine listed the comedian in their Top 100 Most Influential People. This came right in the middle of his fame on Twitter owing to the Saudi Arabia government banning the episode of Patriot Act. Within this context, Minhaj tears every artistic decision of his to bits. He looks back at his speech at the TIME 100 dinner, the subsequent episodes of Patriot Act targeting world leaders and his public chase of Randall Smith—only to call it a sham. Minhaj’s indulgence in ‘Cocaine Clout’ and ‘Facebook Fentanyl’ breaks the facade of Hollywood woke like no other.
‘I want to perform for reasonable people’
Minhaj jumps through hurdles, performs whacky caricatures and spills embarrassing secrets only to gain trust of the viewers. He hands the symbolic piece of chalk to the viewer to draw the line between reason and sincerity. At the core of this performance is the writer’s heightened self-reflective storytelling and perspective. Minhaj has created a place in the online-scape for himself and only time will tell who is out to get him next. Minhaj’s 60-minute crisp special is a loud, animated resignation where the jester dares to snip off the strings from high above.
(Edited by Ratan Priya)