If you’re a fan of the American version of the TV show The Office, you likely remember an episode where Michael Scott makes all his employees do a celebrity roast of him. Not surprisingly, it doesn’t go as planned and ends up something of an unmitigated disaster with a lot of hurt feelings. That sounds a whole lot like what happened to former NFL quarterback Tom Brady, who’s Greatest Roast of All Time that aired over a week ago and streams on Netflix hit like a Zach Wilson interception in overtime. It could best be described as uncomfortable and more accurately connotated as simply bad. It’s so mediocre that Nikki Glazer has been branded a comedic genius simply because she got a laugh. So if you haven’t already watched it but really want to, I’d want to know why.
Besides the somewhat lewd and lascivious nature of a lot of it, and the fact that most athletes aren’t funny – like most comedians aren’t athletic – the most controversial part of the evening was the lions share that took shots at the relationship between Brady and his ex-wife Gisele Bundchen, with whom he has two of his three children, all under the age of 18. A lot of the jokes were about Gisele’s new boyfriend, or why they broke up, or what was wrong with their relationship. There was at least one joke about Brady’s former team owner Robert Kraft’s visit to an adult massage parlor. The rest were a bit tamer, some about his retirement or his next job in broadcasting or bad investments. But it was the dig at Brady’s personal life and divorce that largely drove the narrative.
Now if you were watching and didn’t enjoy it, you weren’t alone. Tom Brady himself has now said that he wouldn’t do it again and that some of the jokes affected his children. He made it sound like this was surprising, like no roast has ever gone south. He also said that this experience was going to make him a better parent going forward, which I assume means he will never do another roast. So I guess the night wasn’t a total waste.
What’s more important than how bad the show was, and I don’t think I’m alone in my assessment, is the question of why Tom Brady felt the need to do it in the first place. Brady lives in the world of professional greatness. He’s likely recognized as the greatest quarterback of all-time and he just signed a 10-year broadcasting deal worth $375 million. He will have earned more money than his grandkids could ever spend, and people will be talking about how great he was long after he’s left the Earth. And yet despite those good graces, he felt the need to place himself at the center of an ill spirited firing squad. For someone who seemed to enjoy always being in control, it was an odd deviation from the script.
There’s a lot of possible explanations. Some suggested he wanted to humanize his public persona as he moved into the next phase of his career. And what better than being the butt of the joke. Perhaps it’s so he can build a career as an executive producer and use this show as a spring board. Maybe he wants to be more like Peyton Manning, whom he topped on the field but trails significantly in the football afterlife. All of those make some sense, even if it feels like there were about 50 better ways to get there than to have Kevin Hart laugh about your ex-wife’s karate teacher.
In the end, the fact that Tom Brady had the roast tells us more about him than anything that was actually said that night. Perhaps what we really learned about Tom Brady was that like many former professional star athletes on the other side of the spot light is that they aren’t really sure who they are or what to do now that it’s over. For a lot of pro athletes, if they aren’t Tom Brady the NFL superstar, then what exactly are you? Maybe that’s what Brady was trying to find out, without coaches and fans and teammates in his ear everyday reminding him like he’s had for the last 30 years. Maybe the Greatest Roast Ever wasn’t so much a roast as it was therapy. And let’s face it, you don’t always like what you find out on the couch.
That said, I don’t expect Tom Brady to come back for another session. Which is great, because I definitely don’t want to watch it.
Keith Strudler is the director of the School of Communication and Media at Montclair State University. You can follow him at @KeithStrudler
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