In comedy, there’s a fine line between making your audience squirm as they are forced to confront hard topics and actually offending people. Arvin Mitchell, a comic known for his shows at college campuses and his urban humor style, performed Friday evening in the Stein. The event, hosted by Student Activities, stayed squarely in the former territory as his jokes ranged from commentary on bodily functions to frank discussions of race and beauty. Yes, there were moments when I felt uncomfortable, but it was the good kind of uncomfortable, the discomfort of having someone call out the lack of diversity at Brandeis or how there is a toxic culture around plus-sized women. But, even through the seriousness, Mitchell kept the crowd laughing the whole time.

Crowd Control, one of the University’s student improvisation troups, opened for Mitchell. Crowd Control started with a basic line game, “I Like My Partner Like I Like My…” where audience members would have to shout out nouns for the group to use to finish the phrase and then add their own analogy to it. The nouns are always odd, and Friday night, Crowd Control had to contend with “treasure,” “tampons” and “breakfast.” Some of the responses, such as “I like my men like I like my tampons, covered in blood,” were straight-up hilarious. The group also did a piece of long-form, but it was incredibly hard to hear what they were saying as they did not have a microphone.

Mitchell was actually in the audience during Crowd Control’s performance, shocking many when he stood up from a table and just walked up onto the stage. Mitchell was laughing as he came up, still cracking up from and repeating a particularly memorable Crowd Control line, and it took him a few moments before he could actually introduce himself because he was laughing so hard. That became a trend throughout the show—Mitchell cracking himself up and having to stop, or seeing someone in the audience laughing and then laughing himself.

Most of Mitchell’s routine involved little stories and memories, seemingly random vignettes slid perfectly into each other. In one part of the show, he talked about an uncomfortable moment when a woman wouldn’t get into an elevator with him because he has a passing resemblance to Ray Rice, the infamous former Baltimore Ravens player who was filmed knocking out his wife in an elevator earlier this year. Moments later, he started talking about an especially unpleasant encounter with an aggressive bus driver, a much lighter topic. Mitchell seamlessly transitioned from a serious moment about racial profiling and domestic violence to a story of a bus ride, filled with impersonations of the people he encountered and his internal monologue at the time. The audience laughed at lines like “Lord, let her [the aggressive bus driver] get hit by a small cement truck,” a sentiment so specific and so bizarre that it’s impossible not to smile at.

The random and the bizarre, the combination of the serious with the hilarious, was what made Mitchell shine this weekend. In another joke, he started talking about a conversation he had with a family member about President Barack Obama and whether or not black Americans only voted for him because he was black. Mitchell did not get especially political during that set, but he still was able to bring up issues of race and stereotypes. He made the moment funny, talking about how he voted for Obama because he liked his voice and went on to do a pretty spot-on impersonation of the president buying a CD for his daughters and getting steamy with Michelle. It was hilarious and taboo. How often does a comedian do an imitation, albeit a pretty horrifying one, of the president and his wife getting things on?

Mitchell can be considered an equal opportunity offender in the same style of the late Joan Rivers because his jokes make fun of nearly everyone in the room. However, I would disagree with that sentiment. Mitchell didn’t offend; he brought up topics that can make students uncomfortable—topics like race and our perceptions of black students on college campuses.

He called out the audience for its lack of diversity, sometimes stopping in the middle of the joke to explain what a Baptist church service is like or what “natural hair” means in the black community.

Comedy is supposed to point out the flaws and the shortfalls of society in a way that is edgy, funny and even a little uncomfortable. Mitchell did just that through his hilarious performance.