John Henton on The Arsenio Hall Show

You may remember this next comedian from the 1990s.

That’s not what Arsenio Hall said, exactly, when introducing stand-up comedian John Henton to his show on Monday night, but he might as well have, telling audience members they knew Henton from his roles on Living Single (1993-1998) and The Hughleys (1998-2002). Welcome to 2013. And here and now, Henton still had women in the audience screaming about his reference to Living Single, and he still had jokes about working on that sitcom. He also had “random thought” observational jokes, or as the kids might call them, Tweets. Also: No need for black people to look up Ancestry.com, and other ways that white people and black people are different.

Nice shout-out at the end of Henton’s act to the late Rahn Ramey, who died this summer. “Rahn Ramey. Double D. Miss you brother!”

And here’s a nice thing for me to mention about how Arsenio’s show is different from those other late-night shows when it comes to stand-up: Hall is giving his old-school pals a chance to get back onscreen (so many of the other talk shows seem preoccupied with giving stand-up comedians their first TV credits and “discovering” them). The Arsenio director also likes to cut to audience members during the stand-up sets, but I’m not so sure I’m as much a fan of that artistic choice.

But back to Henton. Roll the clip!

Sean L. McCarthy

Editor and publisher since 2007, when he was named New York's Funniest Reporter. Former newspaper reporter at the New York Daily News, Boston Herald and smaller dailies and community papers across America. Loves comedy so much he founded this site.

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