Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Chelsea Handler: Revolution’ On Netflix, A Comedian Who’s The Captain Of Her Love Boat Now

After releasing an outdoor pandemic special for HBO Max in 2020, Chelsea Handler returns to Netflix, where she had previously put out a 2014 stand-up special, two documentary series and a talk show. In her newest stand-up special, Handler still wants to put out, or rather, get some, but not from just any someone. She’s got standards, and straight white men aren’t living up to them any longer. Is this her true Evolution to Revolution?

CHELSEA HANDLER: REVOLUTION: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: In her first Netflix stand-up special since 2014, Chelsea Handler took the stage at Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium, directed by her now ex-boyfriend Jo Koy, to reflect on her dating life during the pandemic, how she’s grateful to be single and childless now, and how she came to some brutal realizations about what she’s willing to put up with in a relationship, and what she’s not, now that we all should know better about how men could be treating women.
What Comedy Specials Will It Remind You Of?: Like her peer Amy Schumer, Handler finds herself adapting to changing attitudes toward sex and men thanks to the #MeToo sea-change, but without getting married and having kids like Schumer. In that way, Handler is closer in spirit now to her former Chelsea Lately writer and panelist, Jen Kirkman, in being proudly childless while also demanding more out of men and of society.
Memorable Jokes: After a couple of years of comedians dishing out standard observations on the pandemic, Handler deftly acknowledges our collective cognitive dissonance (“We survived a global pandemic, and now we’re gonna pretend it’s not happening anymore….And I am down with that!”) before approaching the experience from her particular point of view. Grateful for her privilege, not only for not having a spouse or children stuck in the house with her, but also for having riches enough that her sister would persuade Chelsea to let her and her kids decamp to her mansion for a while. She also wisely makes herself the target for mockery first by acknowledging how she’s privileged enough to go riding elephants in Africa yet still ignorant in some very basic science.
There’s an extended bit about her history of rescuing dogs which helps explain why she might make for a great divorced dad but not necessarily a mother to human children, followed by a real-life test of her part-time parental skills thanks to the introduction of two college-age nieces and one adult nephew into her home.
But that’s all prelude to Handler’s own pandemic quandary: How is she going to get laid? She takes on her journey, from interviewing “potential penetrators” for a half-hour while awaiting the custom at-home COVID tests she’d given them, to her ski-and-sex expedition to Whistler in British Columbia (perhaps you’ve seen the topless skiing videos she has posted on her birthdays there) only to encounter one mishap and missed connection after another.

Our Take: For much of the 77 minutes, Handler goes about her storytelling with what might be classified as resting-bitch-I’m-over-this face. Especially if you come for her while wearing a captain’s hat. That is, until she begins describing her relationship with Koy, her former frequent Chelsea Lately guest and comedy friend who became her boyfriend for a year during the pandemic. Then she cannot stop smiling.
Koy, who not only directed this special but also introduced Handler to the stage, let the opening build with anticipation, showing the cheering faces in the crowd excited to hear from her.
What they received was not quite an “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore” Network rant, so much as quite literally “I’m the captain now” from Captain Phillips. Because she realized not just for her own life, but also for all women, that they shouldn’t be putting up with less than the best from the men who try to seduce them. No wonder she claims several of her friends ditched men for lesbian relationships during this pandemic. Men just aren’t cutting it. “As a society, you owe all of us a f—ing apology,” she says. And to men who bitch and moan wondering if they can still open the door for women, she says of course. It’s the least they can do. It’s the least we can do after tormenting women for centuries.
And even though her testimonial to Koy and “why I’m dating a Filipino man” might seem moot since they split, Handler added a postscript message onscreen as she’s earning her final applause, reminding us that she still believes in love and that she will find her person.
She has certainly found her audience. And she knows what to tell them, and us.

Our Call: STREAM IT. If you think you know what Handler’s comedy is like, think again. She’s a different kind of comic now. Older, wiser, self-aware, still horny, but more confident about what she needs to say, and the message she needs to spread. And to my fellow straight men reading this, heed her call: Even if you’re not the kind of a-hole she’s warning about, you know guys who are, and you need to tell them what’s what.

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.