By Nick A. Zaino III Globe correspondent, Updated October 18, 2023, 5:46 p.m
For fans of comedians with local roots, it’s been a very good year. Sam Jay’s “Salute Me or Shoot Me” on HBO is the latest stand-up special released by a comic who either grew up in the Boston area or established a career here, but she’s hardly the only one. Here are nine specials released by local favorites in 2023 you can watch right now.
Sam Jay, “Salute Me or Shoot Me”(HBO, Max)
Jay starts her first HBO hour in much the same place as she did her 2020 Netflix special, “3 AM.” But where she goes from there reflects a growth in her perspective. In 2020, she was brash, trying to establish her identity apart from a relationship. This time, she’s engaged and exploring the ways that has changed her. “You gotta care, every day,” she says. Seeing both sides of the relationship to understand how to keep it together is how society ought to function, too, she says. “No one’s wrong, we just don’t have empathy for one another,” she says. “It’s hard for you to go to the other side, ‘cause you don’t ever have to live the other side.” Jay tells the story of getting high on mushrooms and watching some white people in the park dance awkwardly. “They never even synched up with the beat on accident.” She knows the audience expects her to riff on white people not being able to dance, but that’s not her point. She’s still thinking empathy: These dancing people are so free they’re not even bound to the beat. “Then it dawned on me,” she says. “You’ve been a slave to the beat your whole [expletive] life.”
