Marc Maron is incredibly adept at finding the line between bleak and bleakly funny in End Times Fun

Vulture

"It’s both disorienting and appropriate to watch End Times Fun at this particular moment in history," Kathryn VanArendonk says of Maron's new Netflix standup special. "Maron could not have known when he recorded the special that the specifics of apocalyptic thinking would’ve shifted to viral pandemic by the time the special was released, and it’s not hard to imagine that the specifics of his end-times vision would look different if they were written in the last month. But Maron, who refers to his own thinking as 'prophetic' in the special, is correct enough about the underlying sentiment of apocalypse that the details don’t matter much. Written out like this, none of this special sounds very funny. But Maron’s incredibly adept at finding the line between bleak and bleakly funny, and then poking it over and over."

ALSO:

• End Times Fun was recorded late in 2019, but its spirit is branded with some of the symptoms of early-stage apocalypse that have characterized 2020 thus far
• Maron remains steadfastly immune to any pretensions that his highest ever career profile lends him anything but his wonted, grumpy moral everyman authority