If everyone wins a trophy, is anyone truly a winner? There used to be a time whenlanding a Netflix comedy specialwas a big deal. In the mid-2010s, only great comedians likeBo Burnham,John Mulaney,Demetri Martin, andChris Tuckerweregiven a spotlight on Netflix. This was when the streaming juggernaut was really hitting their stride producing original content, before their current era, when they turned a blind eye to their production offices and allowed anyone in the door. Now, it’s as if no one is curating the specials that are produced for Netflix. Half of the time, these big-ticket comedy events just appear on the streaming service with little to no fanfare in the form of advertising. Unless it’s a generation-defining comic likeNorm Macdonald,Ali Wong,Jerry Seinfeld, orDave Chappelle, Netflix couldn’t seem less interested in pushing new specials. How could you be interestedwhen you’re busy releasing these every five minutes foreverycomedian on the planet? It’s as if they’verun out of comediansand are granting this platform to anyone because, unfortunately for every living thing on this planet,Matt Rife’s first Netflix special is getting extra special treatment from the folks behind the world’s biggest streamer.
Natural Selectionnoisily premiered on November 15, and has brought quite a conversation with it. Had anyone at Netflix actually been curating their service’s content, maybe natural selection would have done its job and killed this “special” piece of garbage before any of us had to endure it.Natural Selectionmust be some sort of unexpected pivot by Netflix to introduce its very first torture device. Somehow, they have debuted a comedy special that manages to pull off the exact opposite intended feeling. Rife has unlocked the ability to tell hardly any jokes in his comedy special in favor of spewingape-brained TikTok vernacularand waxing philosophical about why people shouldn’t take internet trolls seriously… while also throwing a fit over his Twitter replies. Is this what Netflix actually deems “special”?
Matt Rife’s ‘Natural Selection’ Is a Small Part of Netflix’s Stand-Up Problem
If you are still unaware of Matt Rife and his recent big streaming break, do yourself the favor of not digging too deep.If you are curious, though,Natural Selectionis an hour-long special in which Rife “jokes” (Grand Canyon-sized quotation marks) about everything that you would think he’d know better than to include.Rife farts out one-liners about race, domestic violence, disability, and so much more like a mouth-breathing, edgy 15-year-old. Of course, because his material isscraped up from the floorof a dumpster, no one in his audience laughs. Instead, they all just cheer like he’s onThe Ed Sullivan Show. Again… there are next to no laughs — just cheering, whistling, and clapping. They’re excited to be there for Rife, apparently, but not exactly finding his jokes to be all that… funny.
Rife also has next to no sense of pacing. He allows a leap year’s amount of time to run in between gags so that he can noisily sip from his water bottle, repeat “Yeah, I love old people” for the five-hundredth time, and pace around the stage while not saying anything. There are also moments when he tries to philosophize about not letting people hurt our feelings online, yet he spends the last 20 minutes of his set essentially recalling heated Twitter arguments that he has spearheaded.There are little to no wisecracks here either; Rife’s just running his mouth and speaking a language that one could only learn after endless hours of scrolling through TikTok.He even pouts for several minutes about a negative experience in which he “stood up” to a flight attendant who tried to get him to follow necessary safety precautions. Everyone better get out of Matt Rife’s way, because, apparently, this is his world. He will have you know that no one better criticize, challenge, or tell him what to do.
For a “comedian” who presents himselfas a tough and cutting-edge voice that refuses to let anyone silence him, Rife’s material paints him to be the most sensitive human on the planet.Towards the end of his special, he even seems to try and make himself bullet-proof to the negative press by saying, “The way I see it, nobody who is a good person and actually contributes anything positive to society is ever going to go out of their way to leave a negative comment under something that you have been so brave as to create and share with the rest of the world.” It’s not like anyone necessarily goes into a comedy special wanting to hate it.We should all go into specials likeNatural Selectionwith an open mind.It’s important toform our own opinions on comedy, performance, and any other form of art that an artist is putting out there. That said, there was already a ton of publicity surrounding Rife’s poor taste in jokes about domestic violence, disability, and race, so if you know all of that going in, then this special is a bit (or a lot) of an uphill battle.
Netflix Needs to Change Its Approach to Comedy Specials
Natural Selectionis evident of the most glaring issue in Netflix’s stand-up wing in that we’re bringing in non-comics to tell “jokes” that aren’t even crafted with any sense of real comedy. Rather, they’ve cycled through a seemingly infinite number of comedians, both legendary and obscure, to have their big moment on the service. There’s nothing wrong at all withgiving little-known comedians a platformlike this; it’s actually the perfect thing for them. IfNetflix wasn’t using the model of handing out specials to people on street corners, instead premiering a new special every couple of months, then these releases would truly mean something. A new voice wouldn’t have to fight its way through the noise ofNetflix’s endless sea of stand-up comedy, and it would feel like a real moment.
This isn’t the case, though. They’ve opted out to run through everyone in the funny business, write them a huge check, and premiere their big moment to… no noise. Dead on arrival. That, or someone comes along and says the most offensive nonsense possible while sneaking past Netflix’s content curators and producers, only to piss a ton of people off seemingly while the folks at the streamer weren’t looking. They’re not even working with true comedians anymore, they’ve resorted topulling faces from TikTok.
It’s doubtful, but hopefully, this wholeNatural Selectionordeal leads Netflix to move forward with more consideration in the future. There are very few comics that define this current generation, so Netflix, if you’re listening, please take a step back and find us the next great voice. You have the money, the resources, the reach, everything you possibly need to find the next great comedian.Slow down the conveyor beltof stand-up releases and give the best comic possible a special that feels trulyspecialagain.
