Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Howie Mandel & Friends: Don’t Sneeze On Me’ On The CW, A Stand-Up Showcase Of, For And About The Pandemic

Fitting 11 different stand-up comedians into 61 minutes is, well, you do the math. Doesn’t leave that much time for any one comedian to make much of an impression, right? That’s what you think, imaginary reader I just made up for the purposes of this preamble. Ha!

HOWIE MANDEL & FRIENDS: DON’T SNEEZE ON ME: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: The Just For Laughs organization, based in Montreal, has a long history of televised galas, largely broadcast solely in Canada, no matter how chock full of American comedians they may be.
For the past six years, though, JFL and Howie Mandel have teamed up to film one gala each year just for us Americans, and for all Americans, since it’s broadcast annually on The CW. But 2021 marks the first time they filmed it all in Los Angeles. Thanks, pandemic. Actually, please do thank the pandemic for this special, because Mandel and his funny friends largely poke fun at how we’ve behaved during the pandemic. With individual stand-up sets from Sherri Shepherd, Ryan Hamilton, Dulcé Sloan, Danny Jolles, Preacher Lawson, Aaron Weber, Debra DiGiovanni, Natasha Leggero, Robin Tran, and Patton Oswalt.

What Comedy Specials Will It Remind You Of?: Even if you haven’t seen any of Mandel’s previous JFL galas for The CW, then you can consider this particular one as a spiritual sequel to 2020’s HBO Max showcase special: Colin Quinn & Friends: A Parking Lot Show. Only without the parking lot.
Memorable Jokes: Most of the comedians get broken up into individual segments between ad breaks (yes, you still have to watch ads when watching The CW online), so the longer segments naturally tend to linger with you because that’s what they intended.

Mandel’s monologue leads right into Shepherd’s intro and routine, wherein she laid into her Black friends who outline outlandish conspiracy theories for not getting vaccinated, all the while living unhygienic habits. Hearing Shepherd’s techniques for raising her son really do make you think about the need for a father figure for every child, though.
The biggest chunk of time gets handed over to Lawson, an America’s Got Talent alum who’s about to host the AGT live showcase residency in Las Vegas come November. If you didn’t see Lawson’s return to AGT this summer to promote that, then you’ll get a refresher on his comedy and the origins of his name here, as well as a story from Mandel about pranking Lawson when he offered to let the younger comedian travel with him on his private plane.
As the headliner of sorts, Oswalt gets more time than the others.
But even the other comedians, from Hamilton and Sloan, to Jolles, Leggero and DiGiovanni, and even to relative newcomers such as Weber and Tran, make the most of their few minutes to shine.
Our Take: Oswalt summed up the event from the comedian’s perspective at the top of his performance, saying: “Welcome to an evening of shell-shocked shut-in comedians who are just happy to be looking at a room full of faces. You guys could be a warehouse full of bobbleheads. I’d be so happy right now! I don’t care!”
They are truly happy to be telling jokes in front of a live audience again, after months or more away from the stage.
Mandel even cops to feeling nervous about it, since before the pandemic, he’d apparently never taken more than 17 days without a stand-up gig. I kinda wish he disclosed his personal and professional interests a bit more (he is, after all, the longest-serving judge on AGT, and since 2018, a part-owner of JFL). At least he acknowledged the germaphobe in the room. Of course, Mandel should make hay about being ahead of the world on taking germs seriously. It’s been his brand!
After all, this show isn’t about Mandel, even if he’s the face and the name of the special. The point is, network TV doesn’t give the vast majority of viewers who are only casual comedy fans a chance to see this many great examples of stand-up comedy. This showcase really highlights diverse perspectives and points of view, even just from the two JFL New Faces on the lineup (one’s a white guy from Alabama, the other is a trans woman whose mother is Vietnamese). And since The CW skews younger in terms of reaching viewers, this helps keeps the kids abreast of which comedians they should be paying attention to, since most of these comedians aren’t already busy making TikToks.
Our Call: STREAM IT. If you’re in the mood for comedy and not sure what kind, this hour will certainly steer you in whatever direction you want to go to from here, since you can find longer sets from most of the acts online, too.

Sean L. McCarthy works the comedy beat for his own digital newspaper, The Comic’s Comic; before that, for actual newspapers. Based in NYC but will travel anywhere for the scoop: Ice cream or news. He also tweets @thecomicscomic and podcasts half-hour episodes with comedians revealing origin stories: The Comic’s Comic Presents Last Things First.

Watch Howie Mandel & Friends: Don't Sneeze On Me on The CW