George Carlin: What Am I Doing in New Jersey? (1988 TV Special) User Reviews

We really don't need any of those guys.

[lee_eisenberg · 9/10 · 21 May 2007]

Once again, George Carlin skewers the irritation and hypocrisy in our society. My favorite part was his rant about the FCC (and this was before Janet Jackson's nipple on the Superbowl). I will say that "George Carlin: What Am I Doing in New Jersey?" isn't his best work; I just saw "You Are All Diseased" a few weeks ago and liked it better. But any of his work is still great. As long as there are f---ed up characteristics of our society - especially anything about politics - he'll always have something to talk about.

Anyway, this is just more proof of what a great comedian he is. As far as I'm concerned, all of his seven dirty words belong everywhere.

Politics comes in

[Quinoa1984 · 10/10 · 9 June 2000]

George Carlin starts to show signs of political humor here in this special shot in New Jersey's Union theater. I liked it because of that and his bits. Here, he brings politics into view with Ronald Reagan and his criminal gang, things to keep people alert with, people I can do without, and Cars and driving pt. 2 (continued from Carlin on Campus). I really enjoyed his bit on Cars and driving being a New Jerseyan and that here, he starts to show signs of anger brewing from his past (usually, Carlin just does bits on things we don't notice and stuff). Funny stuff, but not quite fully dandy. A+

Still Relevant 31 Years Later

[pmpmn9 · 10/10 · 1 July 2019]

I never saw this in its time, yet here we are in 2019 and pretty much everything George said still applies, except it's not the time of Reagan, it's the time of Trump. I can't help wonder how he'd feel about his country now if he were still alive to see the state of it. Would he even be able to find any humour in it anymore? What would he think if he could see that it's not just the time of Reagan repeating itself, but the time of Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini beginning to rear its ugly head again and that so many Americans helped to bring it on, shamelessly revealing their true Fascist and hateful natures? He had seemingly become so angry and fed up by the time he died, having lost his wife to cancer and fighting it himself. I didn't like the direction his comedy took the last few years of his life...it didn't make me laugh much at all because it was too dark. But this...it was still part of the good times, when I found humour in everything he said, even if he was turning political and in spite of the fact that it was 31 years ago, it's still relevant, even today. I was really surprised by that. It was one of several of George Carlin's I chose to watch on Prime and the first one I decided to watch this last weekend in June 2019, so it really amazed me that aside from the fact that he was talking about Reagan and other things from the past, it could just as easily be about the times we're living in now, except back then, people were so much more optimistic and now, we can't afford to be.