Fin Taylor: Stink

One of Fin Taylor’s friends has informed him that his standup "smells like three in the morning" and, rather than take it as the insult it might have been meant as, Taylor has dived feet-first into the wee hours of the morning to deliver more stoner musings on the world. There's a reason topics such as which animals lay eggs, the legalisation of weed and the eroticism of pizza are kept to the small hours when you and your pals are inebriated, and Taylor should have left a lot of his material there.

Surrounded by empty cans and with a broken clock on the wall, Taylor regales us with thoughts from the witching hour. His humour is like a particularly intelligent high school student who is just a little too sure of himself. That’s the frustrating thing about Taylor: there is a bright, fresh comedian lurking there behind the mask of slacker philosophy that he believes is his schtick. He can craft a story well, but seems to give up towards the end as if he doesn’t have the energy for a punchline, or feels you’ve heard it before so why bother. All too often falling into laddish paradigms, he is self-aware but not enough to do away with brash stereotypes. At one point he claims, "I don't smoke as much weed as you think I do", which may be true. But if he smoked a little less he might see a clearer show emerge.