Overview: The HBO Original stand-up comedy special SARAH SILVERMAN: SOMEONE YOU LOVE debuted SATURDAY, MAY 27 on HBO. Filmed at The Wilbur Theater in Boston, the special features the New England native showcasing her fearless chutzpah.
Expectations: The last time I reviewed Sarah Silverman’s stand-up on HBO, 2013’s WE ARE MIRACLES special, I had a mixed reaction. In a nutshell, I stated I liked what she said but not how she said it. In a nutshell, I stated I liked what she said but not how she said it. She clearly has some deep yet witty thoughts but, for me, not always the best delivery of getting them out to us. She, of course, has done quite alright since, but it has taken her a while to come back to HBO to do it all again, and I’m sure I had nothing to do with it. It has been a decade in fact and here we are with SARAH SILVERMAN: SOMEONE YOU LOVE. The big question for me, as you’d expect was, did the balance between what she said and how she said it balance itself out this time around?
Gut Reaction: Yeah, uh, no. It is still a mixed reaction for me. You either like her or you don’t, I guess. I can take her in small doses. I’m not sure, for example, if I could follow her podcast. She has some interesting thoughts but an odd way of getting them out of her head and past her tongue for me. Though I liked the theme of her first HBO special better, I appreciate she took a stance in this one without stating that was the agenda.
Silverman goes all in for promoting Jewishness (her culture, though we can’t really say faith) and thus being anti-antisemitic. Huh, that sounds like an actual word I’m surprised she didn’t use. She makes fun of Nazis 
and Hitler and even his book “Mein Kampf.” She pokes fun at Jewishness throughout and even leads the whole show off with a basic Jewish mother joke. But then her bold thoughts call herself out on it all. She actually admits to jibing her culture. She says, “I’m selling out my culture for laughs. What could be authentically Jewish? I can’t help it. It makes me so much money.”
And tops it off by saying that is her ‘mien kampf’, my [her] struggle to bear. You got to slog through some pretty stupid shit to get to that message, but it is there and I applaud her for it. You have to get past the “men’s delicate balls are a symbol of courage & fortitude?” and syllabic breakdown of the words “moral compass” to find it.
In Conclusion: I guess she’s not quite my flavor but I appreciate the effort and love some of the thoughts that drive it all. Sarah Silverman could be someone you love as the naughty cutie she is, but I think her point is that a Jewish person is someone you love as well, or, at least, you should. But that’s just my take.
