Dave Chappelle’s Netflix Specials Are A Major Disappointment

I watched the Dave Chappelle Netflix specials, both of them, back to back, last night. Boy, were they disappointing.

I had wanted them to be good so very badly, and though they weren’t exactly bad, they were certainly not very good. I’d say they were borderline decent; okay, worth watching, but not anything to rave about. If Dave Chappelle was not DAVE CHAPPELLE, nothing in these specials would suggest he was ever the most important, innovative, interesting voice in comedy.

Now, I must confess, though I’d wanted New Dave to be like the Old Dave, I had very low expectations going in. Oh, they were so fucking low, these expectations. I figured he’d have to underwhelm, because like, why wouldn’t he? When Michael Jordan suited up for the Wizards, you knew he could still play, knew he was the Greatest of All Time, but you also knew it was very unlikely he’d be hitting game-winning buzzer beaters to bring home the NBA title. Nobody who goes out on top comes back years later and performs at the same level.

And there was evidence to suggest this, too. A week after Trump was elected Dave hosted SNL. His monologue was humorous, partially sobering, but not particularly memorable; there was only one sketch — “Election Night” — that I recall even laughing at.

And over the years, too, I’d heard bootlegs of the stand-up he was doing around the country, little odds and ends, or sometimes whole shows, uploaded to YouTube; each one, I recall feeling as if I was about to hear a comedy God, the God I remembered, but more often than not, heard someone who was just sort of mailing it in, someone who had gotten older, possibly wiser, but also someone who seemed to be out of touch with where culture, society and most importantly, people, were at.

In my mind, being in touch, on the pulse, saying what we all think, but do not speak, or speak, but do not think, is almost the fundamental core of being a great comedian, if not a great artist, period. And any time I’d hear him, he was funny, yes, but he also seemed kind of lost; out of time, when once, he was of the time. Heck, who are we kidding — at one time, he was the time.

And if you think about it, that’s what originally made his stand-up comedy — and crucially, The Chappelle Show — so incredible in the first place. There hadn’t been a comedian in some time, at least back then, who felt like they were so on the pulse of things, so in the thick of what it meant to be alive in the 90’s and the early 2000’s.

You watched him then, and you connected immediately, not just because the material was funny, but because you felt, well, this is what we all feel. I mean, I can’t think of a comedian, or a moment in time even, when the culture so uniformly connected with anyone in comedy. Maybe Eddie Murphy, in the 80’s. Maybe. Probably. But still, maybe. Chappelle, there’s no doubt — everyone thought he was the funniest guy on earth.

But these specials, they are not very special. They are funny, yes, but not any funnier than anything that Dave has already done. And I laughed at them, I did — loudly at times, howling at others, but mostly, I found myself quiet for long periods of time, waiting for punchlines that didn’t come, waiting for ideas to connect that didn’t, and just waiting for things to happen that perhaps I should not.

For example, the closing bit in “Age of Spin,” the first special, connects to a bit he does in the performance’s middle section — ostensibly dealing with Bill Cosby and the idea the of a superhero who rapes and saves people at the same time. It’s heady, interesting stuff; the kind of digressive, sprawling material that might, at the end, make you chuckle, perhaps clap. But it’s not exactly laugh out loud funny or even something anyone, in 2017, seems poised to care that much about. Bill Cosby? Man, right now, let’s be honest — nobody gives a fuck about that shit.

Anyway, I close by saying, again, I feel disappointed. Maybe the accurate term is let down. I mean, all great artists have a few duds in their catalog. For every College Dropout, there’s a Life of Pablo. It’s just too bad it took more than a decade to experience two of Dave Chappelle’s.

Hopefully the 3rd special, due out later this year, is a return to form. Dave’s got to have one more peak-level performance left in him. Even Jordan did.