Perhaps lots of people have seen Nanette. I heard about it on a blog I follow, and I tucked the title away in the back of my head as something to check out if I ran out of things to watch. Blessedly, I forgot almost everything but the vaguest sense of what the blogger had said about the show before I started watching it, and went into it with no expectations.

Aside from Jim Gaffigan, who mostly makes me laugh and only sometimes causes me to squirm, I’ve had to stay away from stand-up comedy.

Mainly, much of it is completely offensive to me. After peeling layers back on our marriage, I am very tender right now, and pretty trigger-happy. I was going to say, not in a good way, but there is no good trigger happy, is there? So much stand-up makes my hair stand on end (Marlon Wayans, I’m looking at you). So I’ve stayed away.

But I unexpectedly came to the end of the season of the show I’d been watching at lunch time, and so yesterday, I did a quick search and found Nanette.

Since I had no idea what to expect, I got more than I hoped for. A powerful, funny, and painful show, Nanette tells an important story so effectively. I love things that aren’t easily categorized; life is full of amazing interconnection, and this show takes full advantage of this. It draws wide circles and then makes Venn Diagrams with them.

By the end, I loved Hannah Gadsby for her brains, her courage, and wit. I wished she lived closer so we could be friends.

If you have a little down time, this is a worthy and thoughtful piece of entertainment.

I have to note, Nanette does contain a fair amount of language, but it didn’t feel gratuitous, perhaps because of Gadsby’s lovely Australian accent.