Bo Burnham: what.

I had not heard of this comedian before and found this special on Netflix and thought I would give it a try. To sum up my thoughts... I do appreciate Bo Burnham's wit and cleverness. I also appreciate his silly and zany performance as well as his musical talents. I just don't find it laugh out loud funny.

Unfortunately, I found What. to be annoying and Bo's singing voice sounds like nails on a chalkboard to me. It's looking doubtful that I will continue watching past 35 minutes. That said, I give him credit for being young, clever and making it happen for himself. And hey, I suggest at least checking out his set because who knows, maybe his comedy is right up your alley.

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 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.

Bo returns to the stage, and delivers on his multiple talents - playing instruments(mostly "air" ones) and comedy - musical(including making it largely out of sampled sounds), verbal and physical. He goes for wordplay, the clever, and the silly, with universal jokes, rather than ones that will date this.

As usual, he prioritizes being consistently funny and challenging over having one specific focus - with that said, he does get rather introspective(such as the "two halves of the brain" bit), and one can tell that he has grown since he launched on the internet. Of course, this doesn't mean that he is unrecognizable, far from it. His brand and identity remain intact, and in-between, sometimes even in, the intellectual parts, he gets just as immature as we want him to.

Awkwardness is embraced, not shied away from. That of himself, and some of the things that go into shaping a show like this - yes, he does go as meta and self-referential as usual(a child of YouTube, that much is clear). We can follow his line of thinking, and yet he throws curve-balls our way. Plain and simple, we never, for a second, know exactly what he's going to do next, and whenever he jumps tracks in his train of thought, the audience(including the live ones for the video recording of this) loves it. It is simply that carefully crafted.

Among his material are social problems(with an indictment of himself and other artists, making this simultaneously the illness and the cure, the reason for needing, and the actual pursuing of, therapy), integrity, religion, sexuality, etc. At the time of writing this, the entire well-paced 60-minute presentation is up on, and thus endorsed by, his own channel, so legally free to watch.

There is brutal and disturbing imagery in this. I recommend this to any fan of Burnham. 8/10

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!