You know, I’ve seen ads in newspapers and online notifications for years about Jeff Dunham performances, probably both in St. Louis and Springfield and maybe reviews on the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel Web site back in the day, but I had not actually seen him perform in television appearances or Web snippets before. Which is odd, because I knew something about his ventriloquist act and maybe I’ve seen snippets somewhere. I knew a couple of the dummies and their names, but I know a lot more about them now.
So: It’s a ventriloquist act. He does a couple of non-dummy jokes before getting the first one out of the box. It’s Walter, the curmudgeon, who has an acid tongue and a nasty attitude. We also get to see Bubba J., the hick that looks like Howdy Doody; Peanut, which was Dunham’s first dummy; and José Jalapeño on a Stick. We get some bits where Peanut and José Jalapeño argue a bit. Dunham interacts with the audience and has Walter answer written questions submitted to them by audience members before the show. It’s probably not as much improv as having canned jokes and selecting questions to fit the gags.
Still, the program is almost twenty years old, and one wonders how his act has changed to fit the zeitgeist these days. His humor, although not especially crass, does touch on the differences between the sexes and other more taboo in 2024 subjects. He did not have Achmed the Dead Terrorist in this show, though, so I guess his act has been ever-evolving.
Amusing in a few spots and, to be honest, since it was my first exposure to Dunham (I think), it was more novel to me than, say, Gallagher whom I saw over and over again in the 1980s or any of the members of the Blue Collar Comedy Tour and better than an R-rated comedy from the later half of the first quarter of the 21st century.
If I find another special of his for another fifty cents, I’ll buy it.
