‘Hari Kondabolu: Warn Your Relatives’ On Netflix: Yes, The ‘Problem With Apu’ Filmmaker Does Stand-Up, Too

If Hari Kondabolu thought comparisons to Apu from The Simpsons cut too deep into his self-esteem, then how would he react to a total stranger confusing him for Kid Rock?
Believe it or not, Kondabolu jokes that has happened at least once, which is perhaps one too many times. On the bright side, though: “This was the first person I had met who actually couldn’t see race.”
Truth be told, far too many strangers confuse him for another comedian, Pakistani-born American comedy star and actor Kumail Nanjiani. Which Kondabolu understands, albeit painfully. Because racism. His first Netflix stand-up special, Warn Your Relatives, doesn’t delve quite so much into his heritage as his previous project, the truTV documentary The Problem With Apu. But Kondabolu does have to beware his own Indian immigrant parents. As he jokes in the beginning of this performance, an 800-person sold-out show in Seattle don’t impress them much.

“It’s important that I know how many people are here, because my father will ask me after the show how many people showed up.”
The way to please his mother, he jokes? Cutting out the stand-up and filling out the LSAT in front of them instead.

Kondabolu does credit his mother’s wicked sense of humor for inspiring his own comedy sensibilities.
After a few late-night TV performances to his credit, Kondabolu made his first more substantial impression on Americans by his writing and guest sets on W. Kamau Bell’s talk show for FX/FXX. There, he delivered politically conscious reports on a Sikh Captain America, and comedic rants against Christopher Columbus and the aforementioned Apu’s impact on Indian Americans. You probably have seen some of his punchlines quoted on protest signs over the past couple of years.
Kondabolu’s also self-aware and savvy enough in his stand-up to know that while loyal fans are sometimes too loyal to him (“Thank you, choir,” he wryly notes, tagging a joke that earned an applause break), while others simply won’t get him. Which he illustrates hilariously by recounting the time Tracy Morgan heckled him, then offered him comedy advice. Morgan called him a “brown Lewis Black.” Kondabolu has ready-made self-deprecating barbs, himself. “I look like a Muppet getting a Ph.D,” or worse, “a caricature of myself.” And if you really want to make fun of Indians, he’ll supply a weird but true stereotype about his culture, complete with political “fun facts” behind one of their most cherished delicacies.
Kondabolu isn’t one of those comedians attempting to hide educational material within his punchlines, as if he were a parent tricking his/her kids into eating their vegetables.
No, he’s much more skilled as a comedian than that, capable of making his points with joke after joke after joke. Sometimes it may come by a simple comparison of the psychobabble applied to mass shooters versus suicide bombers. Other times, he’s weaving a fantastically surreal horror story to solve the American health-care crisis. Or noting that one of President Trump’s most infamous quotes sounds more like a line from a video game. Or repeating one bit four times to try out alternate punchlines. Or acting out the idea of a “devil’s advocate” to illustrate just how unnecessary it is for anyone to be one.
Kondabolu’s comedy invites the types of fans who may want to fact-check him. But that’s unnecessary, too.

You don’t need Google or Wikipedia to know why his analogy of getting tricked into doing homework for the popular kids in school proves why he understands how poor rural white Americans may have been desperate enough to believe Trump cared about them. Nor do you need to remember the actual verses of Shaggy’s 2000 hit, “It Wasn’t Me.”
But when he tells us that “everything feels like the end of a Kurt Vonnegut novel,” you will be reminded that, yes, he’s not for everyone.
Just the ones who’ve already done their homework.
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 Hari Kondabolu: Warn Your Relatives on Netflix