Jerrod Carmichael Reality Show

Of course, the catalyst for all of this on-camera candor was his decision to come out as gay, professionally and personally — and the hits Carmichael takes for his selfish behavior are balanced out by Reality Show’s wrenching depiction of how hurt the comedian was (and is) by his parents’ rejection.

The more you read “Reality Show” as self-obsession, the more likely you are to pull away. But if you watch it as a TV show, as a vulnerable story crafted by a master storyteller, the more likely you’ll be to come away with meaningful truths. Carmichael’s problem runs deep. But it’s easy to reach, so long as you’re willing to dig.

Ultimately, Jerrod Carmichael Reality Show wears its flaws on its sleeve, and is as idiosyncratic, enlightening, and fascinating as so much of Carmichael’s other work.

To dub the result a “reality show” undersells its artfulness and its subtle visual flourishes. The director Ari Katcher achieves a careful balance between naturalism and narrative coherence, and eschews the genre’s glossy direct-to-camera confessionals altogether; Carmichael’s inner thoughts are conveyed instead through snippets of borderline-diaristic standup. “Reality Show” can be tremendously moving, but it’s just as often funny in the way that life is funny.

While Reality Show is not quite as revelatory as his career-defining special, it’s a fascinating, affecting, and valuable experiment in how honest one can really be when you’re writing, directing, and filming your own life.

Carmichael’s buoyancy and openness save the show from feeling dour or hopeless. So do his friends and lovers. And relatives. The fits of conscience that anchor a series notable for its moral and artistic ambition can’t get too precious or navel-gazey; they’re constantly tempered and undercut by the comic’s equally formidable sense of play. “Jerrod Carmichael Reality Show” peaks when it leans into those maddening human paradoxes.

“Jerrod Carmichael Reality Show” may not be a relatable treatise on what it means to come out, but it’s an indelible, candid-in-its-way snapshot of this coming out.

“Reality Show” is not escapist; it doesn’t allow the catharsis of laughter as often as a comedy special like “Rothaniel.” But it feels deeply a part of Carmichael’s larger project of provocation and self-revelation.

The show’s fly-on-the-wall intimacy – surely it will make some viewers uncomfortable — combined with Carmichael’s winning but deeply flawed nature makes this series a viewing experience that’s hard to tune out.

It’s hard to call Jerrod Carmichael Reality Show a “fun” or “conventionally enjoyable” show to watch, but I laughed and covered my eyes in mortification in equal measure — and since I finished my screeners, I haven’t stopped thinking about it.

Which is not to say that Reality Show is a self-serious slog; the half-hour episodes are funny, if often darkly so, because their protagonist and the people around him are funny. At a moment when most comedians brand themselves as either iconoclastic truth tellers or righteous arbiters of virtue, it’s refreshing to see Carmichael take such pains to be perceived precisely as he is.

If you’re not already a fan of Carmichael’s, STREAM IT this first episode to decide for yourself whether you’re ready for what’s to come. There’s certainly nothing here, though, that would surprise fans who have watched him become more and more self-reflective and performative, from the most sanitized broadcast network sitcom version of Carmichael he first presented on NBC, to his 2019 HBO home movies, to Rothaniel, to now this.