Bo Burnham: what.

I have admired Bo Burnham since he was 16 and I was 22. At the time (and still), I was teaching 16-years-olds how to write music; but for me, Bo was a source for my own study. His wit, his timing, and his absolutely genius writing was simply something I had never seen before in lyrical form.

Bo started out as a giant: and still he continued to grow. This show is, simply put, masterful. It is laugh-out-loud funny, it is surprising, it is honest, and simultaneously real and surreal. Bo: my hat is off to you. Please keep doing exactly what you're doing: and please keep surprising us with something different.

When I first saw 'what', I was expecting levels of brilliance which were on par with his previous special 'words words words'. Did it surpass my expectations? Indeed it did. There are many highlights to this daring, creative and catchy comedy special. When you watch this special, it truly gets ingrained in your mind. This has happened to me so much that I can do the entire opening segment by heart(not as good as Bo). Notable songs include, repeat stuff, from god's perspective, we think we know you, sad and left brain, right brain. This comedy special will keep you laughing and have you talking about it for a long time. Overall, 9.2/10.

This wasn't just a comedy show. In fact, I think the comedy was secondary to what was an introspective, artistic masterpiece of debatably unmatched proportions. Every second of this special was incredible, even when the jokes weren't - which wasn't often. I get that comedy is subjective, but this was more than comedy. Bloody brilliant!

Much like Make Happy, I had a lot of fun with this, but I can't help thinking that this may have landed on the side of those things that Bo isn't all that proud of anymore.

There is definitely a lot of clever stuff in this, but equally there's a lot of stuff that feels like it relies on edge over wit and good writing, and if I thought Make Happy slightly lacked a focus, holy hell is this all over the place.

Bo himself performs it as flawlessly as ever, but it still goes from dark fairytale, to left brain/right brain craziness, to poetry, to frog pedophiles, and it felt more like a series of his "lol random" YouTube videos than something with any kind of connecting theme.

There are some really great songs and jokes here though, and I wouldn't say I was disappointed as much as I was intrigued by him having gone from this to Inside, and seeing the evolution - even if I did see it going backwards.

Something I did note as being more impressive in this than in Make Happy is the sheer amount of times he must have rehearsed this to make sure he had it absolutely perfect, because I think this must have relied much more on the background sound effects and Bo's ability to know exactly which ones were coming and how to react to them with such precise timing...especially the ending bit. That must have been a nightmare to get right.

But it's a worthy entry in his stand up for sure, and equally worthy in his discography, even if it does seem like a bit of a relic from the age of random = funny that we've thankfully seemed to have moved past.

I enjoy stand up. very much. but whenever i watch a stand up performance or a comedy special, i look for something not as usual of what in use to seeing. bo burnham exceeds this greatly. out of this world creative and different from just watching someone do stand up. it's more then stand up honestly. this special and his other are very good. another comedy special with this type of boy the usual stand up performance is the middleton and shwartz improv on netflix.