In his first two hours for Netflix, Neal Brennan played with the structure of the stand-up special, whether moving between three microphones for three different styles of jokes in 3 microphonesor representing blocks of material thematically with real blocks in Blocks. Both specials found Brennan dealing with her struggles with anxiety and depression. For crazy goodBrennan is done with it and considers craziness to be a good trait for talented people, while also questioning why we look to comedians and influencers to influence.
NEAL BRENNAN: VERY GOOD: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
The essence: From his early work with Dave Chappelle on half cooked and Chapelle’s showNeal Brennan has collaborated with many notable comedians, whether as a live collaborator for The Daily Show with Trevor Noahor behind the scenes as a consultant, executive producer, writer or director on projects ranging from the Academy Awards, the White House Correspondents’ Dinner and Saturday night live, to specials from Chris Rock, Ellen DeGeneres, John Mulaney, Michelle Wolf, Seth Meyers, Hasan Minhaj, Al Madrigal and more. You may have even seen him on your television in commercials alongside Kevin Hart.
For this special, Brennan wants us to question the way we talk about mental health and comedians, how we respond to trauma, and what to do about social media influencers.
“I have terrible news,” he tells viewers who may remember his previous specials. “I feel very good”.
Memorable jokes: Brennan makes the bits about social media scammers more memorable by reframing them in a vertical format inside an imaginary cell phone, and similarly takes his part in imagining religious attack ads and turns them into actual television commercials that play play as he speaks in a small circle in the corner. from the screen.
Brennan also wryly points out that when she mocks his belief that women love to talk about trauma, she knows he does too, with a catch: “But when I talk about trauma in public, it’s different. It’s on Netflix, damn it.”
When people claim that life is better now than when we had nothing to do but watch a handful of TV channels, he responds: “Depression and anxiety are worse.” Because? “I blame the documentaries,” he jokes. “We used to know nothing.” Maybe we know too much now?!
On the 2024 presidential election: “As far as I’m concerned, the next president will be Trump from prison or Biden from hospice.”
Brennan wonders why we find it so easy to make jokes about murder but not about rape. But he’s even more concerned about the idea that we’re now holding comedians to a higher standard than the rest of society, criticizing Ellen DeGeneres for supposedly being a bad boss, instead of celebrating her for being an rights icon. of homosexuals who was expelled. Primetime television only to come back and dominate daytime television. Then there’s the handyman who probably watched Brennan’s commercials and wondered: Is Kevin Hart humble? Or people boycotting Spotify because of Joe Rogan’s views on vaccines. Brennan jokes that the main problem with Rogan’s podcasts is that they are too long. He keeps talking for three or four hours straight and you’ll say stupid things too.
If you were to go back 20 years to 2004, Brennan notes, “I wouldn’t have said that the host of The newbie and the host of Fear factor”would be prominent political figures in 2024.
And as for the title of his special, Brennan runs through a long list of famous people, from athletes to inventors to rappers to comedians, noting that most of the greats were psychopaths, addicts or “totally sick,” and says no. I have time to also include all the alcoholic comedians who turned out to be great at comedy. Brennan believes that people with uniquely great talent are often only excellent at one thing.
“I’m good at this and I’m not good at relationships,” he says of his comedy, “because I’m worried about this.”
Our opinion: Like Demetri Martin, whose most recent Netflix special Demetri deconstructed Just released last week, Brennan plays with traditions and conventional ways of presenting the monologue.
For example, he literally rephrases a joke he told the live audience about social media scammers.
The part where he produces real TV ads for religions in the style of political election attack ads takes on an unexpectedly different weight thanks to the timing of it all, as he filmed this hour in November, just a few weeks after Hamas terrorist attacks will trigger a general commotion. Israel’s total invasion of Gaza.
So Brennan carefully follows his imagination of an anti-Muslim attack ad by saying, “I wrote this joke three months ago. Different world.” Similarly, she defends a joke about Jews by pointing out that they run show business precisely because they practically invented the industry.
He’s also quick to poke fun at the comedy business. In an opening stunt, Brennan asks ChatGPT to respond to the “opening line of a comedy show” prompt and then marvels at the mediocrity of the results. “Isn’t that strange? “That’s a trillion dollars in deep learning.”
Even stranger for Brennan is having to answer questions about Chappelle for the past 20 years and now also receiving criticism on behalf of many other colleagues. “It’s a strange time to be a comedian,” she says. “I didn’t get into comedy to make big moral judgments about my friends.”
The only point we’ve agreed to disagree on so far is why comedians continue to struggle in recent years.
Brennan’s claim: “Comedians get in trouble all the time for talking about transgender rights. That is, how corrupt is the rest of society? We’re talking about a serious issue and people say, ‘Well, what do clowns think?’ Why do you mention this?
While I agree that we shouldn’t expect comedians to have all the answers, I should also point out that comedians can decide what they want to talk about on stage. No one is telling Chappelle to continue harping on trans issues in every special he releases. No one is asking Rogan to bring up the same handful of topics on every episode of his podcast. They continue to give their stage time to stadiums and podcast time to millions to focus on these things when they could be telling the silly, entertaining jokes that Brennan or any of hundreds of other comedians tell. But that’s not Brennan’s fault or his responsibility.
Our call: TRANSMIT IT. I wouldn’t necessarily call Brennan crazy or say this special is incredibly good, but he clearly put a lot of thought and effort into making his comedy special special, and you can appreciate what he says in provoking us to think differently about both. social media and about the madness that often comes with greatness. Although I would hasten to add as a public service announcement that you don’t have to be crazy to be great. Please do not romanticize addiction or mental illness.
Sean L. McCarthy works the comedy rhythm. He also airs half-hour episodes with comedians revealing origin stories:The comic book features the latest first..
