Ron White: Behavioural.Problems

Ron White’s latest comedy show Behavioral Problems gets off to a shaky start when he immediately assumes the stage and announces that he has just sealed a development deal to create a reality makeover show called This Old Bull-dyke. Apparently, according to White, the original title was Pimp My Muff. You can understand my reticence. Thankfully, the program gets better. In fact, I did laugh out loud a number of times, even if there were a few more times I groaned in frustration at his insistence at excluding a solid portion of his audience with jokes that are noticeably weaker than everything else in his repertoire. White, one quarter of the Blue Collar Comedy Tour (which also includes Jeff Foxworthy, Bill Engvall, and Larry the Cable Guy), maintains all of the folksy charm that has brought him the success of his career throughout the whole show, and is clearly at his best when allowed to ramble through stories in a way that doesn’t necessarily feel like he’s working you up to a punchline. Still, even when you’re laughing, it’s hard not to feel like you’re slumming a little bit, or that, if he tried a little bit more, that he could be a whole lot funnier. The main focuses of White’s comedy are pretty standard stuff. There’s a lengthy discussion about the complexities of oral sex (which, he maintains at length, he only does with his wife) and the idiocy of the multicolor warning system that was developed in the wake of 9/11. There’s also some talk about what’s strange about Europeans and a lengthy tale of his getting arrested for marijuana possession in Florida. And, for the most part, he gets it straight on. His bits on Vogue, where White claims to have learned all sorts of things about oral sex, can be pretty ridiculous, as can warning system segments; White proposes changing it to a system with two settings: Go Find a Helmet and Put On The Helmet. He gets a lot of mileage out of his middle-class befuddlement with the needless complexity of the modern world, but at the end of the day, this turns out to be one of the biggest detriments to his credibility. During his time onstage, White is never once without his glass of scotch and his cigar, which he smokes in the same sort of casual but somehow defiant way that Rush Limbaugh does. He talks about his Range Rover, his private plane breaking down, but also takes a moment of utter seriousness to mention his unwavering support for our troops in Iraq. While it's hard to point to a single moment of insincerity, it’s hard to take him as a whole package. Can this guy really be as ‘rural' as he says he is and own a private plane? Is it a little weird hearing him switch from his love of marijuana to his totally serious support for the troops in Iraq? Taken as a whole, it’s difficult to ignore that this guy’s selling a ‘red state’ persona to his audience, and while that might have been easy to buy earlier in his career, it’s kind of off-putting when you realize that his career depends on you seeing him a certain way. I won’t say I didn’t laugh, but I’m also pretty sure that at least part of what I was seeing was a big put-on, even if I can’t quite figure out what.