Bo Burnham: What. (2013)

I have admired Bo Burnham since he was 16 and I was 22. At the time (and still), I was teaching 16-years-olds how to write music; but for me, Bo was a source for my own study. His wit, his timing, and his absolutely genius writing was simply something I had never seen before in lyrical form.Bo started out as a giant: and still he continued to grow. This show is, simply put, masterful. It is laugh-out-loud funny, it is surprising, it is honest, and simultaneously real and surreal. Bo: my hat is off to you. Please keep doing exactly what you're doing: and please keep surprising us with something different.

I had not heard of this comedian before and found this special on Netflix and thought I would give it a try. To sum up my thoughts... I do appreciate Bo Burnham's wit and cleverness. I also appreciate his silly and zany performance as well as his musical talents. I just don't find it laugh out loud funny. Unfortunately, I found What. to be annoying and Bo's singing voice sounds like nails on a chalkboard to me. It's looking doubtful that I will continue watching past 35 minutes. That said, I give him credit for being young, clever and making it happen for himself. And hey, I suggest at least checking out his set because who knows, maybe his comedy is right up your alley.

After seeing Bo Burnham's "Words Words Words" I became a bit hooked on his style and musical taste. And then seeing another person call this new special a "masterpiece", I had to see if he could pull it off again. My initial opinion is no.With a voice that sounds more like Weird Al every day, the show featured a large amount of pre-recorded material. While the bits surrounding that material was funny at times, it stretched on a bit long and really took away from the natural spontaneity of stand up comedy.Burnham has also become more obscene. While his misogyny is clearly ironic, he pushes the sexual humor to a new level. Funny? Yes. But also a sad thing, because he is smarter than this and going for a laugh with a sex joke is the easy way out.The "God song" (title unknown) was a high point, and he still has plenty of musical creativity in him. I would gladly see Burnham live and look forward to the next special. This was not perfect, but it shows he has not run the well dry just yet.

Bo returns to the stage, and delivers on his multiple talents - playing instruments(mostly "air" ones) and comedy - musical(including making it largely out of sampled sounds), verbal and physical. He goes for wordplay, the clever, and the silly, with universal jokes, rather than ones that will date this.As usual, he prioritizes being consistently funny and challenging over having one specific focus - with that said, he does get rather introspective(such as the "two halves of the brain" bit), and one can tell that he has grown since he launched on the internet. Of course, this doesn't mean that he is unrecognizable, far from it. His brand and identity remain intact, and in-between, sometimes even in, the intellectual parts, he gets just as immature as we want him to.Awkwardness is embraced, not shied away from. That of himself, and some of the things that go into shaping a show like this - yes, he does go as meta and self-referential as usual(a child of YouTube, that much is clear). We can follow his line of thinking, and yet he throws curve-balls our way. Plain and simple, we never, for a second, know exactly what he's going to do next, and whenever he jumps tracks in his train of thought, the audience(including the live ones for the video recording of this) loves it. It is simply that carefully crafted.Among his material are social problems(with an indictment of himself and other artists, making this simultaneously the illness and the cure, the reason for needing, and the actual pursuing of, therapy), integrity, religion, sexuality, etc. At the time of writing this, the entire well-paced 60-minute presentation is up on, and thus endorsed by, his own channel, so legally free to watch.There is brutal and disturbing imagery in this. I recommend this to any fan of Burnham. 8/10