Netflix Hates Funny

Recently, in an article about the latest Netflix outing featuring the spectacularly unfunny comedienne Hannah Gadsby, I wrote the following: “The best 10 or 20 or 30 stand-ups in the English-speaking world could never get anywhere near the stage of a Netflix comedy special because, by definition, they use their wit to ridicule establishment orthodoxy, not affirm it.” I’m afraid that I now feel obliged to withdraw that remark, or — let’s put it this way — qualify it.

Why? Well, one reason is Dave Attell, a living legend whose Skanks for the Memories (2003) is one of the truly memorable hours of comedy. You’re laughing out loud even before he’s done introducing himself. His appearance is sloppy and disheveled, his delivery (in a pronounced Long Island accent) loud and strident, the premises of his schtick by turns preposterous and profane (sometimes both at once), and his segues so lightning-fast that they’re whiplash-inducing. Sample joke: “You know how when you’re young you think your dad is Superman, and then you grow up and realize he’s just a drunk who wears a cape?”

That was 21 years ago. Now Attell has a new special — and, yes, it’s on Netflix. But it’s remarkably underwhelming. It’s only a half hour long, and Attell spends much of it playing the recorder — poorly — and having his audience, also supplied with recorders, play along. Why? Easy: Adding a few minutes of music to a comedy routine is a time-honored way of stretching out the act. As for the comedy, it’s a lot tamer than Skanks. A couple of the funnier lines: “I’m a Biden man. Hunter Biden.” And: “I’m not an ocean guy. Even though I look like I know my way around a tugboat.” Conclusion: Netflix will book a special by a truly hilarious comic like Dave Attell; it’s just that, whether because he’s lost his edge or because Netflix has shaved that edge down, this minor dose of Attell is a major disappointment.

Also out with a new Netflix special is the British comedian Jimmy Carr, whom I saw live eight years ago in Oslo. Writing about that experience in National Review, I noted that I’d bought the tickets because I’d recently caught Carr on TV and found him to be “side-splitting … on pretty much every ticklish subject you can imagine” and because he “wasn’t remotely political.” Well, that sure changed in Oslo. Carr kicked off his act by criticizing Norway for not admitting enough Muslim “refugees” — a ridiculous charge, and definitely an odd way to start a stand-up act — and, unforgivably, mocked at length Norway’s courageous former minister of migration and integration, Sylvi Listhaug, even though he obviously knew nothing whatsoever about her, other than that most of the members of his hip young Oslo audience would be likely to applaud his mockery. He went on to ridicule Christianity; when someone in the balcony asked him to “make a joke about Islam,” he seemed to be thrown off, and not until the end of his two hours did he mention the Religion of Peace, saying that his closing joke “would be a tribute to Charlie Hebdo.” But I didn’t get the joke. And I wasn’t alone.

Still, I decided to give Carr’s new Netflix hour a shot. In appearance he’s the opposite of Attell: slim, trim, perfectly groomed, and always dressed in a natty suit and tie. But like Attell he’s got a rapid-fire delivery; his comedy is all one-liners, and he professes, as he always has, that he’s not scared to take on any topic. “People say, you can’t joke about anything these days,” he announces when he steps onstage. “Watch me now.” As with Attell, what follows is a big letdown. He jokes about Americans’ love of guns, criticizes the Supreme Court’s ruling on abortion, and slams anti-vaxxers. He then asks his audience, “Shall we try some controversial jokes?” There ensue some lame gags about the Virgin Mary having sex with Joseph and a reference to the Vatican as a nest of pedophiles. (How original!)

Yes, he takes on the subject of transgenderism, but only in the tamest of ways. Here’s one joke: “Transgender people aren’t what they used to be.” Yes, that’s the whole joke. Here’s another: “We’re having a gender reveal party for my kid, but we’re going to wait until he’s 21 because we want to be sure.” Repeatedly, Carr warns the audience to prepare for something extreme, only to say something pathetically tame. He actually admits that he can’t jape about Muhammad as he does about Jesus, because “I’m not an idiot.” And yet he dares to brag at the end of his show: “I tell edgy jokes.” No, you don’t, Jim boy.

One comedian who is edgy is Kevin Brennan. He’ll joke about anything — and go after anybody. His inability to contain his anger — and he’s at his funniest when he’s losing his temper — has caused him more than a few career setbacks, hence the title of his short-lived podcast, Burning Bridges, on Anthony Cumia’s Compound Media. Brennan abused his boss, Cumia, on the air regularly, as if he were begging to be fired, but Cumia took it all in his stride; eventually, as if he was angry at Cumia for not firing him, Brennan walked away from the job. But he’s not only self-destructive — he’s hilarious. And he’s somebody whom Netflix would never touch with a 10-foot pole.

But Kevin’s younger brother, Neal? Neal is also a comic. And he has a new Netflix special — because he’s his brother’s opposite. Appearing on the Triggernometry podcast early this year, Neal called himself a “disaffected liberal.” Disaffected? On Triggernometry, he accused Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, of banning books (host Konstantin Kisin, to his credit, corrected him on that one, firmly and immediately) and refused to admit that the late-night network hosts — Colbert, Kimmel, etc. — aren’t funny.

And Neal’s latest Netflix offering? It includes jokes based on the following premises: People who turned down COVID vaccines are jerks; American cops are killing innocent black people in huge numbers; man-made climate change is a serious issue. Neal says Donald Trump was “found guilty of rape” and parrots the libelous untruths told about Woody Allen in the rubbish documentary Allen v. Farrow (2021). Neal brings up the topic of self-identified trans people — as if he’s on the verge of actually being irreverent — only to say, “I don’t really think about them that much.” Does this mean he’s an anti-trans bigot? “No,” he quips, “just busy.” That’s supposed to be a laugh line. On the comedy spectrum, in short, Neal’s bland, toothless material is as far as possible from his brother Kevin’s.

The rest of the new stand-up shows on Netflix are pretty slim pickings. Trevor Noah, fired as Daily Show host a while back for bleeding viewers, is nonetheless somehow still filling arenas. He spends much of his recent Netflix special, Where Was I, bashing America and making endless snotty generalizations about white people. (Imagine a white comedian doing the same about blacks.) By the way, Noah is from South Africa. Has he ever mentioned the systematic anti-white violence there? I doubt it. The only really amusing bits in Where Was I are about the frustrations of dealing with French salespeople. On the other hand, Noah loves Germany because it doesn’t “bury its history,” unlike, in his view, the U.S. To listen to him, you’d think Americans have never been told about Jim Crow. Oh, and he, too, goes after DeSantis, claiming that the Florida governor has banned schoolbooks that mention slavery.

At least I’ve heard of Trevor Noah. That distinguishes him from a lot of the other comics with new specials on Netflix. Who on earth are these people? How can they possibly be filling large theaters? Where do they find these audiences who laugh hysterically at a line like: “I’ve put on weight”? One of these mystery superstars is Taylor Tomlinson, whose new Netflix special, consisting largely of sorority-girl whimsy about dating, is her third. Then there’s Fortune Feimster, who’s intermittently comical in the manner of some fellow guest at a dinner party who unloads at length about growing up as a fat kid and budding lesbian in small-town North Carolina. It’s charming and sweet, but not exactly side-splitting. The climax of her act is this applause line: “The best gift that you can give your kids is to accept them for who they are.” True or not, what does this Hallmark-card sentiment have to do with what we used to call comedy? Watching Feimster, I was reminded a bit of Roseanne Barr, another plus-sized chick with a tough backstory who, when she started out as a stand-up in the 1980s, was an absolute riot, absolutely allergic to Hallmark-card apothegms. What’s happened since then? How can audiences today be going crazy over these (at best) mildly droll stand-ups? Have they never experienced anything genuinely funny? Given what SNL, the late-night network talk shows, and the rest of the mainstream media are serving up these days, I guess not.

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