Hannibal Buress Doesn’t Shy Away From Addressing Cosby Controversy In ‘Comedy Camisado’

In military terms, a camisado is a hifalutin way of describing a sneak attack. In comedy terms, that’s what took down Bill Cosby a year-and-a-half-ago, although the attack was so sneaky, even its perpetrator didn’t expect it to have the impact it did.

“I was just doing a joke at a show,” Hannibal Buress says halfway through his new Netflix stand-up special, Comedy Camisado. “That situation got out of hand…Yikes!”

Back in 2014, Buress’s own comedy star already had risen into the upper echelons – an American Comedy Award for best club comic, two Comedy Central specials, writing tours on Saturday Night Live and 30 Rock, key supporting roles on Broad City and The Eric Andre Show, and even a fun scenery-chewing part on the big-screen as a cop called in on Neighbors.

He didn’t need any controversy nor was he looking for one.

Buress merely was doing what he does best onstage: Expressing his exasperation at the follies of those around him.

Buress may appear so laid back now that he’s no longer sporting eyeglasses that me may take “Netflix and chill” too literally – and a stagehand so casually back-handsprings to retrieve the mic stand at the top of his 67-minute performance at the Varsity Theater in Minneapolis, that you’re not wrong to fall for the nonchalance of it all. Even after Buress tosses multiple sets of eyewear into the crowd.

But the comedian undercuts that vibe time and time again, as he finds himself in situations that frustrate him to the point where only his carefully crafted punchlines can save us all. Exasperation suits him well, even if it makes Buress sweat harder, and both tightens and heightens his vocal delivery. His specificity and attention to detail have served him well on his rise up the comedy ranks, and he continues to carve out his particular niche in this set.

Take his encounter with an Embassy Suites in Downey, Calif. Already, Buress wants us to picture a very specific place where he’s attempting to check into his hotel room without an ID, no thanks to the obtuse front desk clerk. For the joke, Buress tries to verify his identity in various ways to no avail. And his anger at the ridiculousness of her incredulousness only fuels the joke to greater effect. He similarly succeeds in finding a less dangerous but potentially more fun version of Russian Roulette to play, or in discovering why it may have been so difficult working with multiple babies on a film set. Buress used to have a routine about wondering who the “next big blind guy” would be in our popular culture, although in this performance, he circles back to amusingly ponder a conspiracy theory that Stevie Wonder might not have been blind this whole time. Not that he believes it, of course. “I just think it’d be funny if he wasn’t,” Buress said, then questions why and how Wonder would care about basketball. “He goes to NBA games and sits courtside. What are you doing courtside? Do you really like the smell of competition?”

Not all of Buress’s observations are as wickedly unique or personal. We’ve all noticed that NBA team names might not fit the teams once they’ve moved to a different city, or that it’s much easier and enjoyable to be an uncle or aunt than a parent. But none of us have experienced the blowback of finding our jokes made an entire society reassess a comedy legend’s personal proclivities for sexual assault and rape.

Buress doesn’t shy away from addressing it here, first joking that he now has to wonder about a stranger’s agenda in making his acquaintance. “What are you up to, lady? What are your motives?” he questions. “Is this a set-up? Did Bill Cosby send you or some s***? What is going on right now?” He also takes on the tabloid media for “sly dissing me in the news,” and once more spells out in hilarious detail how he imagined one Facebook death threat came into being. Don’t worry, though. It’s all worked out just fine for Buress so far. “Who knew that an offhand joke about Cosby raping would lead to me having amazing consensual sex across the country?” he notes.

An audience member with a cell phone video catapulted “that offhand joke about Cosby” into our collective consciousness. And even now, Buress takes a quizzical stand toward audience members taking themselves out of the moment to place themselves in it with their selfies.

“Hey y’all. Look at what I was sorta paying attention to,” he says. “I saw people filming the beginning of this. It’s going to be on Netflix. Way better!”

True that.

[Watch Hannibal Buress: Comedy Camisado on Netflix]

Sean L. McCarthy works the comedy beat for his own digital newspaper, The Comic’s Comic; before that, for actual newspapers. Based in NYC but will travel anywhere for the scoop: Ice cream or news. He also tweets @thecomicscomic and podcasts half-hour episodes with comedians revealing origin stories: The Comic’s Comic Presents Last Things First.