Tuesday TV Touchbase Too: Taylor Tomlinson: Prodigal Daughter

Having said good-bye to the fictional stand up comedian Deborah Vance in the series finale of Hacks, I thought I would serve up this bonus Tuesday TV Touchbase Too about a stand up special by a real life stand up comedian, Taylor Tomlinson.

Yes, today is the 2nd day of June and this special came out in February. So I'm late to the party.

Being late to a party is fashionable.  

Anyway, let's get this Touchbase Too going.  

Taylor Tomlinson recorded her Prodigal Daughter special in a church.

A real honest to God church with pews and a pulpit, stained glass windows, crosses, the whole deal.

And it's a real ballsy move as Taylor does NOT curtail her signature style at all, talking about sex and saying "fuck" a lot.

She will explain how going down on a woman is different than giving oral to a man and Jesus is right there. 

The special opens up outside the cathedral style church as the camera enters up the stairs (oh look! LGBTQ+ pride flags... nice touch!), through the narthex and into the sanctuary.  

After collecting herself with some deep breaths, Taylor bursts from back stage into the spotlights and the cheering crowds filling the pews.

All to the strain of a choral arrangement of ABBA's "Gimme, Gimme, Gimme (A Man After Midnight)." 

And we're off to the races! 

Taylor does her deep dive into her struggles with depression, her life in a conservative Christian culture and her own queer awakening. 

It's all heavy stuff but Taylor makes it funny.  

Since she's doing this set in a church, religion comes in for some scrutiny.

I do feel for pastors on Christmas and Easter. Those are big weeks at church, right?. Those are recruitment weeks. That’s when everybody comes out of the woodwork. That’s when the decaf Christians swing by. You only see those motherfuckers twice a year and you got to blow their minds so hard with the extras that they upgrade their subscription to weekly.

That’s a lot of pressure.

And as the pastor on Christmas and Easter, you can’t get creative. You can’t get weird with it. No acoustic set. You have to play the hits. You gotta tell the stories, right?

Easter’s a better story than Christmas, in my opinion. If you don’t know, Easter is the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ. It’s where all our merch is from. You’ve seen it. You’ve seen a dead guy up there, but tasteful. Somehow very tasteful.

Makes you think about your own death, like, ‘Ooh, hope I die in a way that looks good on jewelry, right’?

Think about it. When grandma died, were you like, ‘Slap her on an anklet’?

No. He’s really doing it up there.

The special's title Prodigal Daughter comes from her  take on the parable of the Prodigal Son.

“If you ask a pastor about that story, they’ll tell you it’s about how you can go off and sin and lose your way spiritually, but you can always return to the Lord and he’ll forgive you. 

And if you ask me what that story is about, I will tell you that it is about how Jesus was an only child.”

But the special's title also represents her pushback on the passive-aggressive expression of “I’m praying for you.” 

Having grown up in that culture, I understand where Taylor is coming from, “I’m praying for you" is often a judgement.  

Not "I hope life gets better for you and you are truly happy" but more "I hope you realize what a mess of a sinner you are and you come around to right way of living."  

Taylor is not repudiating faith or religion, just what people do with it.

And to be clear, I’m not an atheist. I just don’t know what happens. Neither do you. Spoiler alert, nobody knows. 

I’ve never related to the certainty so many Christians feel where they’re like, ‘I just know’. You’re like, ‘But how do you know there’s a God’? 

‘I just know’. 

The only time I’ve ever just known something, it was that I had diarrhea. 

That’s the only—the only time I’ve ever been like, ‘Oh Mhm, mhm’. 

And I did start praying.

Towards the end of the special, Taylor takes a more serious turn regarding the abuse and weaponization of  the Christian faith.

“Religion can either be used as a weapon or a tool. And to be clear, if you are using religion as a weapon to control, manipulate, scare people, to make yourself feel superior to everyone else, fuck you. That’s not what it’s for. You are not using that correctly.

Because if God does exist, he does not exist to make you feel better than other people. He exists to make you better for other people… Whatever makes you a better person for other people, that’s what you should be doing.”

Taylor Tomlinson's  Prodigal Daughter delivers a lot of laughs from Taylor's not afraid to say anything persona. And damn it, she also makes you think thoughts and feel feelings. 

Prodigal Daughter is epic in it's scope and sheer audacity and worth a look and a listen.

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Geez! How many weeks have I done TWO Tuesday TV Touchbase posts a week? 

And I'm still running behind! 

OK, enough is enough.  Next week, back to ONE Tuesday TV Touchbase a week.  But we've got a lot of TV to touch base on!

• Georgie & Mandy's First Marriage
• Ghosts
• Brilliant Minds
• Two Dan Levy series, Schitt's Creek and Big Mistakes
• Stranger Things (Yes, NEW Stranger Things!) 
• Spider Noir
• Invincible
• Jeopardy and Pop Culture Jeopardy
• Wheel of Fortune

And more to come! 

Until next time, remember to be good to one another and try to keep it down in there, would ya? I'm trying to watch TV over here.