When T.J. Miller walked into the empty arena of Ritchie Coliseum for his sound check last Thursday night, he was yelling. When he took the stage an hour later, he was yelling.
When he sat down for an interview in his green room between the two, he was only yelling a little bit.
“Can I get you a turkey mustard?” he said immediately, an offer that proved very quickly to not be a joke.
The comedian and actor was the headliner of Student Entertainment Events’ Homecoming Comedy Show, along with Damon Wayans Jr., and despite lower-than-expected ticket sales prompting a move from Xfinity Center to Ritchie Coliseum, the crowd seemed excited for the Silicon Valley star.
And Miller — a graduate of the George Washington University — seemed excited to be back in the Washington area performing at a college.
“First of all, never thought I’d make it to the New Carrollton stop,” he joked over plates of turkey and mustard, laughing maniacally. But Metro humor aside, he remembered being at least generally aware of the University of Maryland while in school:
“I remember meeting a couple people who went to school here at like, some party… everyone was under-aged,” he recalled. “And we were at this bar and these dudes were like, ‘Yeah, we go to the University of Maryland.’ And some girls were like ‘Oh cool, what do you think of it there?’ And they said: ‘Well, we have better frat parties than this bar.'”
But even his shouted declaration that he wanted to knock on Frat Row doors and “FLIP SOME FUCKING CUPS” couldn’t compete with his energy on stage.
After a pretty standard set of anatomical sex jokes from Wayans Jr. — who correctly presumed on the stage that some people were probably thinking “Coach is so vulgar” — Miller took the stage with a roar. For the first hour, he sprinted frantically (and sometimes literally) from bit to bit, riffing on everything from the lighting team (“They’re high as a kite, and I’m talking opiates”) to the sign language interpreters, one of whom he dubbed “the greatest in America.”
The formless, script-less feel of the show was a refreshing change of pace for SEE comedy shows and thoroughly enjoyable to watch — as long as you weren’t the girl whose boot Miller stole and threw into the crowd during a jaunt. But the real highlight of the night was the half-hour of material from his upcoming HBO special, which Miller did at the end of his set — something he doesn’t do at all college shows.
“I went and did this show at The College of New Jersey, and it was really fun, but I just needed it to be that show. I had just done this HBO special, I just needed to do a fucking show,” he said before his performance. “But I think, especially with my interactions with everyone at Maryland so far, I think I’m going to try to do a portion of my HBO special here and see how it sits.”
And considering how jarringly different the material was from Miller’s earlier on-stage antics, it sat well with the crowd. The tone was certainly darker: He talked about death, anxiety, being pro-suicide and time theory — not necessarily standard stand-up fare. But to the audience’s credit, they hung on — and still had a good time.
Which is what Miller hopes students do at his college shows.
“I am very happy to be at any university performing comedy because I think people need to just check out for an evening,” he said. “And they don’t have to do it at Bentley’s.”
