Heather Bucha

Jimmy O’Brien is a stand-up comedian – and not a very good one – which explains his day job at Tops Grocery. Like any dreamer, Jimmy yearns to escape his working class roots and make it big, if not for the nagging details of his small life. Jimmy lives with his high school sweetheart Annie, their daughter Wendy, and his wheelchair-bound grandmother Ruth in a sagging house propped among the stark suburban sprawl of blue-collar New Jersey. Jimmy finds release amid a lonely stretch of comedy clubs along the Jersey Turnpike. Like a poor man’s Lenny Bruce, Jimmy lets fly with a biting commentary on the naked details of his life. As Jimmy’s situation devolves with passing year, so too does his routine, until the line between persona and reality is blurred entirely. In the uncompromising style of his acclaimed feature debut Joe the King, Whaley’s The Jimmy Show explores an America where dreams are sometimes few and far between. With honesty, compassion, and wit, The Jimmy Show reminds us that sometimes what we’re searching for has been there all along.