re: Chris Rock - Selective Outrage

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Chris Rock is more like the black Andrew Dice Clay

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Oof, hard disagree there. I could accept the other stuff you said. It's not his best special, imo (and I'm a big fan), but comparing him to Dice doesn't ring true AT ALL to me. Rock has had many ahead of his time bits. Dice was just a dumb cartoon character like Larry the Cable Guy that used inane catchphrases (catchnoises? Catchexclamations?) to gain a following of even dumber people.

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Rock has had many ahead of his time bits. Dice was just a dumb cartoon character like Larry the Cable Guy that used inane catchphrases (catchnoises? Catchexclamations?) to gain a following of even dumber people.

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That's my point. Rock's become a caricature of himself. Maybe using Diceman and Larry the Cableguy are a bit extreme, but Rock is clearly pandering to his audience now with easy "pussy payment" throwbacks.

I mean, do a post-mortem on thw special and just look at the mostly stale and superficial-level takes:

-selective offense (promising start)
-racist yoga pants (fairly funny, I guess)
-J6/Reps and Dems bad (mostly white men bad)
-black-on-black racism (tired)
-Meghan Markle/black-and-white racism/black mamas and grandmamas (ho ho)
-spoiled, rich black and white kids (who can relate to this?)
-the touche bit! Rock fricks Disney characters now instead of taking church Disney trips (classless, elitist joke that felt pretty spiteful to me)
-mother who attends cooking classes in France (poignant but not a joke and seems strangely out of place)
-Kardashians and OJ jokes (so stale)
-Beyonce/Jay-Z Burger King joke (simplistic yet still falls flat)
-dating older women more demanding than young women
-neighborhoods with men outside during the day (we're solidly back in '90s territory with these two bits now)
-Will Smith (what anyone really tuned in to see with an inexplicable, final frick you to white people)

I'm probably missing a few bits, but please tell me what was funny? My wife and I shared a snicker once. MAYBE twice. The vast majority ranged from eye rolling to outright cringe.

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-selective offense (promising start)
-racist yoga pants (fairly funny, I guess)
-J6/Reps and Dems bad (mostly white men bad)
-black-on-black racism (tired)
-Meghan Markle/black-and-white racism/black mamas and grandmamas (ho ho)
-spoiled, rich black and white kids (who can relate to this?)
-the touche bit! Rock fricks Disney characters now instead of taking church Disney trips (classless, elitist joke that felt pretty spiteful to me)
-mother who attends cooking classes in France (poignant but not a joke and seems strangely out of place)
-Kardashians and OJ jokes (so stale)
-Beyonce/Jay-Z Burger King joke (simplistic yet still falls flat)
-dating older women more demanding than young women
-neighborhoods with men outside during the day (we're solidly back in '90s territory with these two bits now)
-Will Smith (what anyone really tuned in to see with an inexplicable, final frick you to white people)

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I don't think you actually took offense to the parts that made fun of white people. This guy loves white people. He let Ricky Gervais and Louis C.K. say the n-word in front of him without the slightest pushback.

I will agree that some of the bits were a few years too late. I thought the Burger King Beyonce bit was actually quite good. Kardashians and OJ, yeah those are already well-read ground.

The Will Smith stuff is salient to me because he was one of the people directly involved. That gives him some cachet.

Overall, I give it a 6.5/10. Funny lines at times, but not up to his standard. I don't think he'll ever get back to the level he hit early on. He was young, hungry, and not rich back then. It's more entertaining when the person throwing the stones is on the same side of the fence as you.

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Chris Rock and Chappelle are next level with Dave being in a category of his own.

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Truth.

The discipline exhibited by Rock to wait almost a year to nuke Will and Jada from orbit about last year's incident was exquisite.

I'm just shocked he didn't want the special to run live opposite the Oscars next week for spite alone.

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Now straddles art

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Oh for frick’s sake

Watched this yesterday with the wife.

I was a little disappointed overall, but that's mainly because instead of Chris Rock being funny, it almost felt more like Chris Rock trying to sound like Chris Rock being funny, if that makes sense. Like it almost felt like his delivery was off because he's not the same person he was in the late 90s/early 00s, but he was trying to sound the same. And for whatever reason it was a little hard to buy into that.

That being said, I liked it and I still laughed at a decent bit of it. And I did really like some of it, especially the Will Smith part at the end. He went hard without going overboard, and you could tell it was very carefully crafted to avoid certain things. For example, he never outright called Will Smith a bitch, but he named 20 other people that did.

Another gripe I had was that it almost felt a little.....too crafted and intentional. Like it felt like the whole time he was just talking about random nonsense and you could tell he was dying to get to the end (although I did like the "not trying to piss off another rapper" lines). And then it almost seemed like he was trying to push the envelope without going all in, because he didn't want to offend certain people or groups of people.

All in all, it was a shell of his former standup self, but that's also to be expected 20+ years later and considering some of his OG specials are in the argument for the GOAT specials. And at worst, it was solid. I'd give it about a 6/7 out of 10.

Are you going to give 1-5 star ratings on each segment, too?

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Just watched this with my wife

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Still doing "cost of pussy jokes for men" jokes at 58 years old doesn't cut it.

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Sensing a theme in this thread; men without balls.

His abortion bit was funny but felt like a ripoff of bill burr’s bit from his red rocks special.

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I know I need to just enjoy the show without thinking about politics, but the white privilege and abortion stuff completely took me out of the show.

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Yeah, the political stuff was bad. I don't care if a comedian agrees or disagrees with me politically, as long as they are funny about it. And Rock's political bits just missed completely with me.

I guess another complaint I had about it was that a lot of felt a little too "low hanging fruit" for me. And I expect more than that from someone like Rock.

The bits about his spoiled daughters also felt disjointed and out of place. Like a lot of that wasn't even funny or jokes, but rather him dogging on his kids for being spoiled 9while simultaneously bragging that it was him that spoiled them).