Hannah Gadsby: Something Special

I always found Gadsby super witty and edgy, but this one is so put on it fails to be counted as comedy. Gadsby definitely lost her edge here, telling "normal" jokes something she really doesn't have an advantage in. And all the name dropping is so tedious. I couldn't even follow the storyline of her meeting with Jody Foster, among others. She sounded as if she is not convinced of her own jokes, which makes sense. The tone is flat and monotonous, it's as if she is banking on her fans liking her that she is not bothered to put in the effort. It really doesn't work when the comedy is entirely 100% about you! You're interesting but not THAT interesting. Sorry Hannah thumbs down for me for this one.

Call me old fashioned; but I generally like some comedy in my comedy specials. I honestly don't know what this even was, but it wasn't comedy.

I've seen a lot of criticism thrown Hannah's way, and I've never bothered to confirm whether or not it's justified, so I decided to watch Something Special.

The criticism is justified.

This wasn't so much much a comedy special as it was a long whinge; about how hard Hannah - and women in general.- have had it in life. At no point does she explain how or why she's oppressed. She just throws it out there and uses the victimhood as a way to solicit laughs - a task at which she fails massively. I didn't even manage a smile during this show. I just sat scratching my head, wondering why it is this woman's shows get such high ratings.

It's truly a mystery to me.

From the outset I'll make it clear that I'm not a big stand up fan but my wife really likes Hannah Gadsby's offerings so I agreed to give it a try. It was far from 'Something Special', literally didn't even grin once but I guess I'm not her target audience. My wife wasn't laughing either for most of it, she did have the odd snigger here and there and I asked her if she thought ti was good, her reply was 'it's okay, not her best work'.

I think some comics miss the boat a little by appealing to a very narrow fan base, super narrow in Gadsby's case, she pretty much had me thinking 'I don't think she likes me even though we've never met' within 10 minutes.

I "got" Nanette and I really enjoyed "Douglas" but I don't know what the hell this was suppose to be. Yay, she got married, completely happy for her on that. I'm happy for her wife as well. That's wonderful. But the rest of it didn't land anywhere near humorous for me. I found it repetitive, morbid, and banal at best. She sounds liked she was trying way too hard for this special; the previous two felt quite organic and true to herself. This felt like a pop star was making an album to meet a record company contract and the only important thing was to fulfill that contract. I maybe snickered once. Ok, it was a chuckle but the rest of it was dismal. So disappointing.

Hannah Gadsby returns with a third Netflix special that starts good and ends great. While her first special is best remembered for being a serious affair, and her second increased the quantity of jokes (Gadsby herself acknowledged she'd unpacked most of her trauma in her first big special), with Something Special, I feel like Gadsby just revolutionised "my wife" comedy (which itself is a generally tired type of standup that I tend not to like).

To elaborate, it's a pet peeve of mine when stand-up comedians rely too heavily on jokes about their wives (mostly men, but I've also seen female comedians who make much of their routine about partners), and that there seem to be increasingly fewer ways to make these jokes funny. They're not always inherently unfunny, but it's a type of joke you start to recognize (and get tired of) after watching a decent number of standup specials.

Here, Gadsby's show largely revolves around the last few (mostly positive) years of her life, particularly how she came to be married. Her jokes aren't at the expense of her partner; they're more just funny and endearing observations. The endearing part makes up for the fact that the material isn't always laugh-out-loud funny. It's a little more subdued, but it's consistent and doesn't often miss. It also builds up to an excellent ending that made me appreciate the special as a whole much more.

If there's one complaint, it's that things grind to a halt whenever Gadsby mentions "editing out" jokes that don't hit. I feel like comedians should take a failed joke in stride, lampshade its failure in a funny way, or actually edit it out and not let the imperfection show. I know I've seen other comedians lately do this kind of reference when something doesn't hit with the audience, and I think it's starting to hurt specials. It's confusing, because I remember her second special had some better meta-observations about the nature of standup, but here, they just feel like (very occasional) awkward bloopers.

But this is largely a very good special, and expertly subverts and puts a positive/wholesome spin on the tired "complain about my wife for an hour" style of standup special. From now on, anyone else who wants to base a comedy special primarily around their significant other has to make sure it's at least as good as this.