---
title: "What do you do when the first joke dies but the rest of the | Tough Crowd"
url: https://toughcrowd.co/banter/question/handling-bombs/what-do-you-do-when-the-first-joke-dies-but-the-rest-of-the-
description: "I’m getting better at accepting that one joke can die without the whole set being bad, but an opener getting nothing still scrambles my brain more than anything"
lang: en
---

# What do you do when the first joke dies but the rest of the set still has to happen?

B

BristolBitFixer (https://toughcrowd.co/banter/Stand-Up-Comedians/BristolBitFixer) 27 Aug

I’m getting better at accepting that one joke can die without the whole set being bad, but an opener getting nothing still scrambles my brain more than anything else. Do you have a deliberate reset — slow down, take a breath, go straight into the next bit — or is the goal basically to train yourself not to treat the first silence like an emergency?

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