Is This Thing On? is much more about a relationship than it is about comedy, which is probably a good thing, given how difficult it is to make movies about stand-up. Fictional comics on screen tend to skew toward being tortured truth-tellers or delusional sociopaths or both, but Alex Novak, played by Will Arnett, is neither. He's a finance guy who recently split from his wife of 20 years, and who stumbles into an open mic night on a whim
You can see what attracted Lincoln to the part. John is the anti-Grimes. We meet him (once the obligatory opening scene of the character covered in blood and running through some woods is over and we've flashed back to Two months earlier) fleeing the sight of a man in the playground beating up a woman, so panic-stricken that he leaves one of his two children there and has to go back for her.