On Aug. 17, 2025, I watched a video of Ritchie Torres, a congressman from the South Bronx who speaks in short monotone stabs, coldly staring down a crying nerd in a suit. That nerd is Adam Friedland, a fascinating specimen from New York City who hosts “The Adam Friedland Show.” He is the former resident heel of “Cum Town,” an extremely crass and popular podcast that Macalester men seldom admit to liking. Now, at age 39, he hosts a show where he annoys famous people. It’s great.
In order to review his show, I’ve reflected on why I find Friedland so fascinating to watch. The usual lines used to describe his style of comedy — nebbish, Woody Allen-esque, neurotic, etc. — are more or less accurate, but also insufficient. His violently antimainstream standup often sees him drolly stammering through material while laughing at the audience for expecting any of it to coalesce; but every single aspect of his weekly talk show would lead you to believe that he takes his new job extremely seriously, from Friedland’s bookish costuming to the camera’s digitally-added film grain to the theme song sung by Mac DeMarco. Not to mention the fact that the set is a near exact replica of “The Dick Cavett Show.” This is the setup that plays out in every episode; the punchline is that Adam Friedland is no Dick Cavett. Dick Cavett wouldn’t hit rapper 2 Chainz’s blunt while giggling about being a “J-boy;” Dick Cavett never would have yelled at music critic Anthony Fantano about Abbey Road for minutes on end without allowing the guest to interject a single time; Dick Cavett never would have irritated FKA Twigs to the point where she begs on the floor for the interview to end. Cavett, after all, played his part as an intellectual conversationalist extremely straight, delivering interviews that satisfied both the audience’s desire to watch something important and the guests’ desires to feel important. Friedland, on the other hand, occupies the persona of someone who tries to host a serious talk show, but is simply too nervous, self-absorbed and geeky to do it well. The humor of the show comes not only from witnessing his guests try to make sense of what this guy is on about, but also from the audience juxtaposing the show they’re watching with the ones that inspired it. It is this riff on universal cultural archetypes that gives Friedland his signature voice as an interviewer.
Of course, he couldn’t do it alone. The roster of guests he has had in the show’s second season has been insane, and has resulted in a strange week-to-week experience for regular viewers. One week, it’s “looksmaxxing” interviewer Clavicular, another the newly-elected NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani. He has a number of older comedians on the show as well, such as the brilliant Richard Kind, all of whom catch on to the show’s gimmick very astutely, producing some of its most hilarious episodes.
It may surprise you to learn, then, that the show’s best episode isn’t funny at all, and in fact features a lengthy breach in character for its host. That episode is the aforementioned interview with United States congressman Ritchie Torres. For those of you who don’t know, Torres is arguably one of the country’s most staunch defenders of Israel, even in the midst of its genocide in Gaza. Friedland, a former Middle Eastern studies major who lived in Israel for a year in his teens, presses Torres on this issue, questioning the narrative that the suffering in Gaza is necessary or justified. Friedland also emphasizes the large amounts of money Torres receives from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). The ensuing argument, during which Torres refuses to engage with Friedland for even a moment, is tedious and painful to watch. Eventually, Friedland breaks down crying, lamenting that his identity as a Jewish man is being used by a violent state to justify transparent cruelty, and begging Torres, who has resorted to repeating party line talking points, “Don’t do TV.” In this conversation, Torres ends up representing a heartless political machine more than he represents his own personal perspective.
To watch Friedland switch so quickly from the detached irony of his comedic persona to a sincere plea for humanity in the span of a few minutes is surreal, but it also reveals an interesting side of the show as a platform. Unlike many talk shows and podcasts, it’s not a spotlight for the host’s political takes, nor is it one for the guests. It is a place where the polite and sterile conversations of late-night television go to die. This outpouring of emotion is not typical of the show, but it does contain the essence of what makes it great: Adam Friedland is not doing TV.
