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Photo-Illustration: Vulture; Photos: Netflix
Though Dave Chappelle and Ricky Gervais insist they are offending you in novel, culturally meaningful ways, the Edgy Comedy Special has been a genre mainstay for years, dating back to Joe Rogan’s Triggered, Chris D’Elia’s Incorrigible, and years of work from Bill Maher. It’s a type of special that insists it’s being offensive and surprising while delivering an experience that is instead familiar and trite. These specials tend to come from established comedians, a key feature that allows the jokes to be framed as “dangerous” even though the set is being taped in front of an audience primed to be friendly and appreciative. The treasured idea of any Edgy Comedy Special is that it understands risk. It is brave in a way few comedians have the gumption to be brave, and it exists to cut through all that bullshit and just express what everyone’s thinking but no one has the guts to say.
This particular form has settled into such a predictable mode that Netflix can suggest it to viewers as an algorithmic category using a variety of euphemisms: “Irreverent,” “Raunchy,” “Politically Incorrect,” “Social Commentary,” “Bold & Brash,” “Way Out There,” “Oddballs & Outcasts.” The Edgy Comedy Special is a formula, just like a police procedural and a home-renovation show. That’s pretty funny! What’s more amusing than an Edgy Comedy Special insisting that it’s idiosyncratic while actually being like every other Edgy Comedy Special?
But the formula means that it’s also possible to name and describe the features that make these specials so repetitive. Not every Edgy Comedy Special will do all of these things, but any special that does at least half of them is choosing safe, well-worn territory.
For example: Triggered, Intolerant, Sticks & Stones, Freedumb, Infamous, I’m Sorry You Feel That Way. Thumbnails for the special on streaming services have imagery like caution tape or an ominous microphone. Bonus points for an MPAA-style rating or content-warning title card at the opening that indicates the special will be offensive to some viewers.
Camera angles emphasize the impressive size of the venue, and the massive, roaring crowd of fans. POV shots from the comedian’s perspective entering the stage capture overwhelming adoration. But at the same time, there are deliberate postures toward being an authentic comedian of the people. Some of the favorite signals include: wearing a black T-shirt; smoking onstage; a stripped-down, bare-bones set; sitting on a stool.
Within the first five minutes, the comedian uses any one of the following starter pack of subjects as a punch line: trans people, disabled people, wokeness, domestic violence, violence against women, rape. Historical topics in this group included racial identity, illegal immigration, and liberals as a voting bloc, but in 2024, none of these categories hold enough oomph to distinguish a comedy special as Edgy.
Probably this group is people with disabilities (see, for instance, Dave Chappelle’s The Dreamer; Matt Rife’s Matthew Steven Rife). It could also be a racial group, or anything from the list of possible opener topics.
This includes, but is not limited to, knee slapping, swinging the microphone around, and excited laughter either before or during the performance of a joke.
This can be as obvious as saying the word “backlash,” as in Gervais’s special Armageddon, which begins by naming his previous Netflix special and then congratulating himself on the backlash. But this category also includes any joke premise that begins with posturing about how they’re about to do a joke they know they’re going to get in trouble for. Comedians may also congratulate the audience for being willing to play along, unlike other bad audiences who just get angry.
This includes racial slurs, slurs about gender identity, and descriptions of disabilities. Audiences react to the use of bad words with delight; the overall mood is one of thrilled permissiveness. The chief idea of the joke is less about the actual hot-button topic that the word represents and more about why language is or is not offensive, with a particular emphasis on why people should still be allowed to say the bad word. At no point does the comedian reconcile the idea of not being allowed to say a word onstage with the fact that they are, at that moment, saying it onstage.
“After a show in [San Francisco / Idaho / Texas] one night, a [disabled person / trans person / gay person / Latino person] came up to me and told me how much they loved it when I made jokes about them.” Such jokes offer a veneer of due diligence on the comedian’s part, along with implicit scolding for anyone who can’t be as game as this one definitely real audience member.
There is no need to wait for the punch line, because the audience has already heard the thing they came to hear: someone being naughty by saying a bad word or talking about a sensitive topic! Actual joke writing is entirely unnecessary.
The comedian claims this is to give the audience what they want — or because they just can’t help themselves! Another variation of this is a joke with some version of “I’m sorry, but [insert controversial topic] is just funny!” as either the intro transition or the closing tag.
This device allows a comedian to shift out of provocation mode and underscore that they really have just been joking all along. This bit of earnestness doesn’t undermine or undo any of the preceding material. Instead it offers a simple reassurance: Don’t worry, the comedian is a good person. It’s okay to have laughed at these jokes. We’re all on the same page! We all mean well, and this hour of material about gender, wokeness, and hacky racial stereotypes is all in good fun. Keep chuckling, sit back, and wait for the algorithm to funnel you along to a completely different hour of comedy. Chances are good it’ll be called something like Biased Against Jokes or You Can’t Handle the Truth.
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