Stream It Or Skip It: ‘2nd Annual HA Festival: The Art Of Comedy’ On HBO Max, Sometimes Sequels Really Don’t Live Up To The Original

For a second consecutive year, the HA Festival in San Antonio has produced a stand-up comedy showcase for HBO Max, complete with plenty of celebrity cameos. At the end of the hour, though, will you remember the comedy or just the celebrities?

2ND ANNUAL HA FESTIVAL: THE ART OF COMEDY: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Somehow a comedy festival not only has debuted during the pandemic but also has produced an annual special for HBO Max.
We’re talking about the HA Festival in San Antonio, devoted to showcasing Latino comedians.
Last year’s first installment featured Gina Brillon, Jesus Trejo, Mark Viera, David Del Rosario, Carmen Lynch, Pedro Salinas and Monique Marvez, all hosted by Anjelah Johnson.
For year two, they’ve upped the ante on the host side, with veteran headliner Paul Rodriguez joined in emcee duties by Emilio Rivera from Mayans M.C., the cast of The Garcias (an upcoming HBO Max sequal of The Brothers Garcia), plus video appearances by Danny Trejo and Paulina Chavez — herself the star of Ashley Garcia: Genius in Love — to also introduce two of the stand-ups. This crop of stand-ups include names you may have heard of (Chingo Bling, Lisa Alvarado, Steve Treviño) as well as relative newcomers to the scene (Ralph Barbosa, Dave Jay, Jessica Keenan).
That’s a lot of talent to squeeze into 55 minutes!

What Comedy Specials Will It Remind You Of?: Last year’s showcase, obviously!
Memorable Jokes: Considering the comedians themselves only get short sets to show off, they try to make the most of it.
In just four minutes, Ralph Barbosa manages to tell us a lot about his upbringing with his observations about gas stations, marijuana legalization and gay marriage.
Alvarado, a single mother of Peruvian descent, joked about how that affects her status within her family, and illustrated the travails of modern dating by mocking men’s online profiles and their desperate desires for foot pics. Her best singular advice for men posting their own pics: “We don’t look at you. We look at our future.”
Jay made his TV debut first with an initiation by telling jokes to riverboat tourists (a repeat gag from last year’s showcase), then getting onstage, where he revealed the troubles of growing up poor in the 1990s with a Pakistani father and Puerto Rican mother. “You ever been bullied by a Black teenager? Every Black teenager is funnier than everybody on this show, OK?”
Bling had a special appear on Netflix in 2017, and here, he devoted most of his time to a story about how his plans to have his deaf wife upstage a fund-raising attempt by a deaf basketball coach backfire on him. With much less time to make her impression, Keenan — who’s half Mexican, half Lebanese — was the only comedian to take notice of and make light of the paintings and portraits the festival used to accompany them onstage.
Treviño served as a true headliner, presented that way both in introduction and time duration, and the comedian who has four specials to his credit spent his time connecting to the audience over married life and trying to keep his marriage sexy while raising small kids. Of course, when you’re also giving your six-year-old son instructions on when it’s OK to swear, you might find it backfiring on you, too.

Our Take: Trejo opened last year’s showcase with a sketch mocking the paltry history of Latino comedy in our collective memories. I gave that showcase a STREAM IT mainly because it might get more viewers to check out the full hour specials of many of its comedians. Does this year’s crop have the same appeal? Not exactly.
Our Call: SKIP IT. As the TV ads have incepted me, just OK is not OK.

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 2nd Annual HA Festival: The Art of Comedy on HBO Max