Jeff Cesario: Some Assembly Required

Jeff Cesario distinguishes himself from the hordes of jabberers filling the comedy clubs these days by winning over audiences with what he calls common sense and I call obsessive skepticism. He has a sweet smile and a gentle manner, but he brutally dismisses everything from psychiatry (”If you’ve got the money to go into analysis, let’s face it — your childhood wasn’t that bad”) to astrology (”When people tell me it’s a legitimate science, I say, ‘Oh yeah, sure, that’s a legitimate science — that’s why newspapers put coverage of your science on the comics page”’). In Some Assembly Required, Cesario doesn’t elicit huge laughs, and a half hour of him is plenty, but he’s one of the few comedians around whose thinking is as intriguing as their punch lines. B+