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The Shark Deck. I’m Johnny Mack with a rapid reaction to the Chris Rock Special. It is eleven seventeen PM and I just turned off the postgame show. This will be a little less focused than a normal podcast because I’m not really working off a script. I do have some light notes and I’m just sharing my thoughts.
What’s going through my mind now is You’ve heard me talk in the past about the hypothetical return of Eddie Murphy to stand up, and I think this is a good warning to Eddie that nothing could ever lead up to the hype. I’m coming away from a Chris Rock special that probably is perfectly fine. It’s definitely not his best work, but because of the anticipation for a year, what’s Chris Rock going to say about Will Smith? And for Chris to not get to that material to an hour in, I think that was a mistake. And I say that, and I mentioned this on Twitter.
I say that realizing Chris Rock is one of the all time greats and I’m an idiot in the basement recording a podcast. So yeah, Chris Rock knows a lot more about comedy than I do. But just as if you were, I’m like, get to it, get to get to it, and he buried it, and I think the energy was out of the room. So just now I was sticking around for the post game and I’m like, oh, this is gonna be a tough set up, and they immediately threw it to Kareem Abdul Jabbar for his take, and I was like, dude, it’s quarter after eleven. I’m tired.
I no longer care. I’ll let me go through my notes here and I’ll handle this in chronological order as I wrote things down. So about nine seventeen or so, I went to Netflix. I went to the waiting room and it said the special would load, and then it hadn’t buy, like nine thirty three. I’m like, hmm, so I had to exit and go back in.
And because of that, I missed the first three minutes of Ronny Chieng. Other than that, you know, a little stuttering here and there, the Netflix tech was pretty good. I’m sure there’s a way they can figure out how to make sure the room actually loads if you get there too early, but whatever. Fine. So when I got there, Ronny Chieng was already in the middle of his set and he was joking about Netflix’s innovation of doing comedy on Saturday Night Live, which got a good laugh out of me, and he pointed out it was comedy on Saturday Night Live with Chris Rock, David Spade, and Dana Carvey.
Pretty good observation there, nice spot for Ronny Chieng, pretty high visibility. I thought he was pretty good. Deon Cole was your DJ. Dion had nothing to say. I don’t know why he was there, but okay, fine.
Then they threw it to Spade and Carvey to tease the postgame show, David Spade doing most of the talking. Carvey had his back to the camera, which telegraph that he was probably setting up some sort of bit what’s going to happen when he turns around? And Carvey did a really awful hack Joe Biden. It was bad. I’ll read you my notes on myself verbatim.
Carvey doing an awfully hack Biden. Geez.
And then the part that annoyed me in the pregame show was remember all week I…
It was just really lame b roll. Amy Schumer’s part was filmed on the street, as if like somebody found her on the street and had a flipcam and was like, Amy’s about Chris Rock for five seconds, and she did Paul McCartney I think was on a total of three seconds. It said something like Chris Rock’s really funny, hey, and that was it. Like, as I mentioned during the week, I worked at a place that lived and died. By the press release, I get the press release and Netflix, congratulations, your press release said, featuring Amy Schumer, Jerry he signed, called Paul McCartney, Matthew McConaughey, and whoever else she got in there, and I took the bait.
But boy, as a viewer, lame. Ronny Chieng mentioned that the Netflix is a Joe Comedy festival. We’ll take place May second to the twelfth. I think that was an announcement. I don’t recall doing a story telling you about the festival returning, so that’s good news.
He didn’t mention who would be playing there, but there were a bunch of recognizable comedians in the crowd, so who knows. I’m sure we’ll have something in the next few days that we can talk about. I’m still on the pregame show, here JB. Smooth happened. He was funny enough.
He off and gets by on energy. His bit was a bit forced, but it was fine. Leslie Jones then came out to do some stand up. Oh. At one point they threw it to Jeff Ross, who opened for Chris Rock.
I wish they had just shown Jeff Ross warming up the audience. That would have been better than the pregame show. Anyway, Leslie got up did some stand up, and it felt like she was playing to the room. Her material was a little inside baseball. I never got to mention, like I said at the top, this is a little more free form than I usually do.
The pregame show sounded like it was to a room of about eight people, like the audience wasn’t reacting. At the end of the half hour pregame, it was revealed that the audience was mostly comics. That explains that comics aren’t going to laugh at other comics. They’re going to sit in the back and go like, oh, that was really good, or even hate on whoever’s on stage. So that made sense, but it made the room sound dead.
Anyway, Leslie got up and she kind of repeated the SNL joke about it being comedy on Saturday Night Live. I guess she didn’t know Ronnie did it and her version wasn’t as good, so that landed flat.
And then finally it was ten o’clock and time for Chris Rock to come on.
At that point, I tweeted, this is fun. Feels like an event, like it really felt like old time TV or like a sporting event where we’re all watching the same thing at the same time, and it felt big. So out comes Rock? Do we get kay? Early, I flagged a couple of jokes.
One was about r Kelly and Michael Jackson Chris’s punchline along the lines of same crime. One of them has better songs that get a good laugh out of me. Then he did a chunk on Elon Musk and I thought that chunk was really good. Next thing, I wrote down what’s up with Chris Rocks shoes? And I googled.
He’s five ten, so it’s not like he’s short. Why the two inch three inch lifts on the shoes? Why does he need to look taller on camera? I just that was catching my eye, and I’ll point out if I’m focused on your shoes. The comedy’s not on point right because I’m not.
I’m like my mind is drifting. Then he went into a really strong chunk about Megan Markle, and I think this might have actually been the strongest part of the night. A good line about the British Royal family calling them the og racists, calling them the sugar Hill Gang of racism. That got a good laugh out of me. My notes on myself.
There was the Megan Markle chunk was when Chris Rock found his groove. I compared it to a baseball starting pitcher finding his good stuff in the third inning and now cruising in a good way. First ten minutes or so. I don’t think Chris was totally in his rhythm, but for the Megan part, yeah, he was rolling.
And then the special started to fall apart, and I wrote, is there a clause in…
Like they weren’t that good? And I don’t know, It’s like you’re just waving a flag now to get people to react. Especially the combination of doing transgender jokes on Netflix. I don’t think it was worth going there. I don’t think it paid off.
At ten thirty four, I wrote, Chris has waited way too long to get to will Smith and he’ll need a killer closer or this will be a letdown. Let’s see what happened. So right after the halfway mark, I’m like the next thing, I wrote abortion chunk, getting a reaction on Twitter, it’s been a boring ten minutes. Yeah, the abortion chunk. I started to just zone out and I wasn’t feeling the room, and I was looking at what people are saying on social and it seemed like that was where the special probably dipped the most, and people were like getting pretty restless.
My next note was, it’s been a boring thirty minutes. Yeah, there’s a solid half hour that’s just kind of like AI and we’re getting out to that or h. Chris finally got to the Will Smith material at eleven o’clock, so or a full hour, and he finally got into it and it was fun. He seemed genuinely angry, not having seen him do this material on other nights. Is this him putting on an act or did the live national audience kick him into an extra gear where he felt the emotions in more of a raw way than maybe he did on other nights, I don’t know, but watching it on TV, he seemed to have genuine anger during that segment, and that was a strong segment, not as strong as the Megan part.
Though. He also blew a joke that’s not me saying that. He said that the joke was along the lines of Jada being upset that Will Smith did not get an oscar for concussion, so instead he gave me a concussion. But he blew the joke and said the movie emancipation the first time around, then admitted he blew the joke, kind of tapped dance and circled his way back around to get the concussion joke in, but he had telegraphed it so it didn’t land when he finally did it.
And then he did an actual mic drop and we were done at about the seventy minu…
I think that chunk would have worked better about twenty minutes in, but what do I know. He’s an all timer and I’m tweeting, So that’s my quick take there. I want to like it more, I don’t hate it. Let me say my twenty twenty three rankings. My immediate take right now, I have Napergatzy at number one.
Was it better than Nate? No? Was it better than Jim Jeffries? No? Was it better than the roast of mister Peanuts?
Can you believe I’m actually humming and hawing was Chris Rock’s big One year later, I’m gonna finally talk about Will Smith better than the roast of mister Peanut? I? Yes, I gotta say. Yeah there. I’m opening up my little notepad here and I’m putting Chris Rock at three.
But I only have four things on the list, and the fourth is roast of mister Peanuts. So I don’t know. That’s my quick take. Would love to know what you guys think, so hit me up in the Daily Comedy News Facebook group, or on the Reddit or on social media. All the links are in the notes.
It’s a little late here. You can hear my voices giving out. But my takeaway right now is that was okay? If your new follow show for free on Apple, podcast, Spotify, or YouTube wherever you get your shows, normal episode in the feed the way I scheduled at this normal Sunday episode came out one minute before this bonus episode, and you know, go listen to that and I’ll see you tomorrow on Monday’s episode. I do not talk about Chris Rock at all because I already recorded it, all right.
See. Yeah, so you’re at McDonald’s and you at your bag and you open your bag you want to grab a couple of fries or something, and there’s five thousand dollars in it. Yeah, this happened at one guy. Hi, I’m Johnny Mac, host of Five Good News Stories. He gave me the money back.
Don’t worry. If you want to start your day with a smile. Twice a week, I’ve got five good news stories for you. For example, there’s an airline for dogs. Or what about the woman in her eighties who just released her debut album.
How about the dude who found one hundred and fifty corn on the cobs under his floorboards? Is corn on the cobs? Even the way you say that? Who cares? And yes, that was a pony at the supermarket.
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