Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Dave Chappelle: The Closer’ On Netflix, Sincerely And Just Kidding, The Comedian Bows Out With A Blazing Rebuttal Of His Critics

In a joking promo for his sixth and presumably final Netflix stand-up comedy special, Dave Chappelle has Morgan Freeman ask the question: “How do you close a body of work that profound?” Profound might be a bit of an overstatement, but then again, this is a comedian now willing to refer to himself as “the GOAT” in a climactic story to close out Dave Chappelle: The Closer.

DAVE CHAPPELLE: THE CLOSER: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: When Dave Chappelle brought his talents to Netflix in 2017, he did so with a bang, making up for 13 years since his second special (2004’s For What’s It’s Worth on Showtime) by releasing four separate projects in that calendar year, two he’d already filmed but kept archived (The Age of Spin and Deep in the Heart Of Texas), one new set (Equanimity), and one surprise follow-up he filmed on the fly (The Bird Revelation) to respond both to his previous works as well as the #MeToo movement. Two years ago, he came back with Sticks & Stones. That output alone won him three Grammy Awards and three Emmy Awards, as well as the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor.
Since the pandemic began, he also has released one blistering short for Netflix’s YouTube channel and two other performances just on Instagram — none of which were particularly funny, focused more on the murder of George Floyd in the former, and on Chappelle’s own battles with Comedy Central, HBO Max and Netflix over streaming rights to Chappelle’s Show in the latter.
So yes, Morgan Freeman is quite well-tasked to ask in the promo: “How do you close a body of work that profound?”
Chappelle chose to do so by doubling down even harder than he had in Sticks & Stones.

What Comedy Specials Will It Remind You Of?: It’s Dave Chappelle. This special really is geared toward people who have been paying attention to his previous performances.
Memorable Jokes: Part of me wants to dissect the whole thing bit by bit, but that’d be falling into a trap that none of us can win, especially you as an audience. Instead, I want to direct your attention to just the first five minutes or so of his onstage set, because it’s really all about setting up the hour to follow.
First, Chappelle issues a warning. “Don’t get freaked out,” he says, but “this is going to be my last special for a minute.” The audience, in fact, does not freak out over this.
I’ll condense and paraphrase this next part so as not to spoil it too much, but for those of you who have been paying attention, Chappelle reveals once more that he did get and survive his own bout with the COVID-19 coronavirus, that he has gotten vaccinated (before or after getting sick?), mocks himself for his choice in that regard, and proceeds to make light of it all, wondering how many people he may have killed just to practice and prepare this set for Netflix. All of which the audience responds with both laughter and applause. He follows this with a series of jokes that could offend you if you’re offended by pedophilia, anti-Asian material, or anti-Semitism. Don’t worry. I’ll try to make sense of this for you if you are offended or confused. Just know that at the end of all of that, we’re still barely into the set, and when a man in the audience shouts out his love and adoration for the material, Chappelle’s face turns. The comedian pauses, then replies: “It’s going to get worse than that. Hang in there.”
Our Take: Chappelle clearly wants to go out with a bang. If he meant his YouTube special (8:46) as his own rallying cry that Black Lives Matter, and his IG videos as a way to show other entertainers how to fight for their own rights, then he intends for The Closer to blaze a path for other stand-up comedians to survive and thrive in this moment when anyone and everyone feels they can try to “cancel” you over your words. As Chappelle reminds us twice in this set, he’s not only rich and famous, but he also once turned down millions more from Comedy Central just on principle. He cited the latter in criticizing the #MeToo movement for actually not going hard enough, choosing symbols such as pins, black dresses or pink pussy hats over more strident forms of protest. He wished instead that actresses fired their agents, went down to the mailrooms and lifted others up. “You got to get off the bus and walk,” Chappelle said. “I’m the one that got off the bus, and left $50 million on the bus and walked.”
It’s far too easy to get caught up in the words and lose sight of the context, perhaps even more so these days when it comes to comedians.
When Chappelle repeatedly says of himself, “I’m transphobic,” or at one point declares, “I’m team TERF!” he’s almost begging you to do so. When he’s imagining Mike Pence trying to pray his gay away, he’s also appealing to an entirely different demographic. Chappelle says his primary objective in this performance, with respect to the LGBTQ+ community, is to let them know he does not hate them, but rather is jealous because they’ve been so much more successful activists than Black Americans have been. “We are trapped in this predicament for hundreds of years. How the f— are you making that kind of progress?”
As a comedian, and particularly one who’s gleeful enough to embrace other’s descriptions of him as “the GOAT,” Chappelle wants comedians to retain the ability to say anything onstage in a dialogue with their audience. In our streaming social media age, of course, there’s an inherent problem with that, precisely because the comedian’s words go out to potentially billions of people who were not in the room and have their own context for interpreting the jokes.
Which makes the opening scene of The Closer more telling in retrospect.
In it, we see someone flipping through Chappelle’s comedy catalog on long-playing albums. You remember LPs? Vinyl, as the kids of all ages call it now. We see his body of work represented on vinyl first, audio only. Could you imagine just listening to Chappelle’s comedy, watching the vinyl spin as his final Netflix special?
If we did, it’d require us to know everything about Chappelle as a person and as a comedian before dropping the needle on that record.
Without the visual cues, without the historical context, could you tell when Chappelle was being sincere and when he was merely kidding? Do you think he enjoyed having a priest molest him as a kid? Do you think he beat up a lesbian in a nightclub and got away with it because TMZ didn’t believe it? If you didn’t know any better, you might not know what to believe. That’s part of why live stand-up comedy is so much more effective. We can see the comedian’s eyes and facial cues, and they react in conversation with us as an audience.
It’s the joy and curse of contemporary comedy in the age of podcasting that comedians talk in the same tones when they’re expressing their sincere beliefs as when they’re joking.
Our Call: STREAM IT. As long as Chappelle and the other comedians keep telling jokes in the clubs, I’m OK with no more specials from him, or anyone else, for that matter. We need the safe spaces to laugh at our own tragedies and come together as one, more than we need a new recorded hour every year or every other year from every comedian on every streaming platform. Even if it means a hit to my pocketbook as a comedy critic.

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.

Watch Dave Chappelle: The Closer on Netflix