Stand-up Comedy Review: The Dave Chappelle and Ricky Gervais New Netflix Specials

COMEDY ROUND UP

Dave Chappelle’s The Unstoppable – 2.5 out of 5 Chuckles

Ricky Gervais’ Mortality – 2.5 out of 5 Chuckles

This holiday season has seen two Netflix comedy specials from two of the more notable anti-woke stand-up comedians of our current age released to the masses. Dave Chappelle’s The Unstoppable hit Netflix on December 19th and Ricky Gervais’s Mortality hit the streaming service on December 30th.

Chappelle is widely considered to be the best stand-up comedian of his generation, and he has been on a real heater in the last decade, churning out seven very solid – to often spectacular, comedy specials dating back to 2015.

Deep in the Heart of Texas (filmed in 2015 but released in 2017), The Age of Spin (filmed in 2016 and released in 2017), The Bird Revelation (2017), Equanimity (2017), Sticks and Stones (2019), The Closer (2021), and The Dreamer (2023) is a murderer’s row of comedy specials that eclipses any of Chappelle’s contemporaries by miles.

Chappelle made some tsunami-sized waves with his iconic bits about transgenderism in Sticks and Stones, The Closer and The Dreamer, which put him front and center in the culture wars and in the crosshairs of the tiny Torquemadas of the woke brigade.

Those bits were extraordinarily funny, and effective, because they were so savagely incisive and insightful. Unfortunately, Chappelle’s new special, The Unstoppable, is neither incisive nor insightful. It is a rather meandering set that lacks vigor, comedic vitality and initiative, and is devoid of any particularly memorable bits.

Chappelle’s main focus of the show is him talking about his recent well-paid appearance at a Saudi Arabian comedy festival, which triggered his detractors, like Little Bill Maher, to call him a hypocrite. The argument being that Chappelle is outspoken about free speech and assaults on his right to it, but then would bend the knee to an oppressive regime like Saudi Arabia just for cash.

Chappelle’s response to the criticism, most notably from Maher, lays bare who pulls the strings of whom in the comedy business and Hollywood…and let’s be clear…the Middle Eastern country that controls Hollywood ain’t Saudi Arabia.

Chappelle’s self-defense is, all things considered, mild to say the least…he could’ve eviscerated Bill Maher – a target rich environment if there ever was one…but he doesn’t…he gives him a gentle but firm bitch slap. I personally would’ve loved it if he referenced Maher fellating his Israeli pay masters, as well as the U.S. intelligence and military industrial complex, at every chance he gets, but that’s just me (and that’s something I do on a regular basis).

Chappelle’s set runs just over an hour and it is rather listless and mostly lifeless. It is a disappointment to see Chappelle be less dynamic and vital as we’ve become accustomed.

To close the set Chappelle does talk about how a high-profile, controversial guy like him has a target on his back and maybe someone or some group of people would try and take him out…like they did to Charlie Kirk. Chappelle may be correct with that concern…but my guess is he’ll die of lung cancer before anyone attempts to murder him…or they’ll murder him by giving him lung cancer…because his chain smoking during the special is the most memorable thing about it.

Since 2018 Ricky Gervais has been consistently touring and releasing comedy specials, some of which have been very good.

His last three specials, Humanity (2018), SuperNature (2022), and Armageddon (2023), have all been top-notch, with Gervais slapping woke culture with verve and aplomb on all of them.

Gervais has never been considered a great stand-up comedian, but with those three specials he showed himself to be quite adept at the art form. Unfortunately, Gervais’s newest special, Mortality, is a divergence from recent history, as it’s a pretty flaccid affair.

Gervais throughout seems detached, and the special feels less like a real stand-up show captured on film than a choreographed comedy special masquerading as a real stand-up show.

Gone from Mortality is Gervais’s usual verve and vitality and in its steed is a rather rudimentary set that feels small and creatively and comedically withered. Gervais’s timing is off throughout and his energy is diluted and distracted.

The material in Mortality is, on the rarest of occasions, clever, but never insightful, and it all feels rather sub-par and unoriginal…so much so that the best parts are when Gervais recounts better jokes he told while masterfully hosting the Golden Globes in years past.

In contemplating Chappelle and Gervais’s sub-par comedy output on these new shows, the conclusion I came to is this…that the fever of wokeness – and its accompanying hysteria, has broken, at least for now, and so comedians who thrived pushing against that madness, now find themselves without a formidable foil and thus they lose some vitality and verve.

Chappelle and Gervais were so good at standing in the eye of the woke storm and sticking a thumb in it that now with the hurricane winds subsiding, they have lost some meaning and purpose in their work.

Another comedian who thrived in opposition to wokeness was Bill Burr, whose anger and rage found a perfect target in the silly and soul-sucking mania of the woke movement. Burr though has now lost his fastball…and the majority of his other pitches, not because wokeness seems to be receding, but because he has essentially acquiesced to the woke mob – instead of beating them…he joined them – and lost his edge in the process.

It seems incomprehensible to even consider Chappelle or Gervais doing such a thing…but in the current moment, where wokeness has loosened its manic grip on the culture, Chappelle and Gervais have in response lost their comedic fervor. They seem to be men wandering the new cultural landscape trying to find their way and identify some landmarks with which to orient themselves and their comedy.

All in all, The Unstoppable and Mortality are forgettable comedy specials that are entirely harmless…and essentially toothless. They are worth maybe three or four chuckles each, and frankly, that’s the bare minimum for an hour long special.

If you are looking for some transcendent, insightful stand-up comedy from Chappelle and Gervais, The Unstoppable and Mortality is not it. That said, you could do worse than watch these two specials if you’re looking for a laugh or two and to pass the time.

©2026

Dave Chappelle: The Closer - Review

****THIS REVIEW CONTAINS MATERIAL FROM DAVE CHAPPELLE’S NEW STAND-UP SPECIAL!! YOU’VE BEEN WARNED!!****

My Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SEE IT. Chappelle is the greatest comedian of his generation, but you better enjoy him while you can because weak-kneed Hollywood would rather virtue signal than entertain.

Firebrand comedian Dave Chappelle’s newest Netflix stand-up special The Closer has, not surprisingly, been met with predictable outrage by all the usual woke suspects.

Headlines like “Dave Chappelle faces backlash for troubling trans jokes” from Newsweek and Deadline declaring that “executive producer of ‘Dear White People’ are ‘done’ with Netflix” because the streaming service dared run Chappelle’s “homophobic” special, jump out when Googling the comedian’s name.

Chappelle has a woke bullseye on his back once again because in The Closer he’s simply does what every great comedian is supposed to do, humorously speak truths that ordinary people are too intellectually conditioned or socially cowardly to dare articulate.

And make no mistake, Chappelle is unquestionably the greatest stand-up comedian of his generation, and is in the discussion of the best stand-up comedians of all-time, and while The Closer isn’t nearly his best effort, it does nothing to damage his prestigious position atop the comedy world.

Chappelle opens The Closer by informing his audience that this is going to be his “last special for a minute”. Like Michael Corleone, Chappelle is settling all family business with the aptly titled The Closer, and there was a lot of business stirred up by his recent run of six extraordinary Netflix specials, from 2017’s The Age of Spin up through 2019’s Sticks and Stones.

Chappelle’s uproarious evisceration of the sensitivities and absurdities of white feminists, the LGBTQ community, and trans people in particular, in those numerous Netflix specials has been what has made him public enemy number one among the woke.

In The Closer he once again pulls no punches and peppers his audience with quality bits, like his children’s book titled “Clifford the Big Black N*gger” and his movie idea of a conquering group of entitled aliens returning to earth titled “Space Jews”, both of which are masterly woven and defiantly delivered.

It’s his jaunt through the minefield of feminism and LGBTQ issues though that once again have riled the reactionary woke brigade and incensed the Torquemadas of Twitter. For instance, Chappelle’s blistering insights regarding the class and race issues woven into feminism, #MeToo’s performative idiocy, and the notion that “gays are minorities until they need to be white again”, are ruthlessly on point.

It’s when he once again wades into the dangerous waters of transgenderism though that he is most brutally effective as both a comedian and a philosopher, and is no doubt most offensive to the those with delicate sensibilities laying prone on their fainting couches.

Chappelle declares himself, like Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling, to be a TERF – trans exclusionary radical feminist. He also says “gender is a fact”, and transwomen are the equivalent of blackface, which are such blatantly obvious notions yet are so aggressively labelled anathema in culture today as to be blasphemous.

The hilarious heresy continues when he points out that Caitlin Jenner (formerly Bruce Jenner) won a Woman of the Year award the first year she was ever a “woman”, despite never having menstruated, which in Chappelle’s eyes is like Eminem winning “N*gger of the Year”.

Chappelle then shows off his comedic craftsmanship when he subtly shifts gears towards the end of the show while recounting the tale of his friendship with a trans comedian named Daphne. This sequence is exquisitely executed and funny, but also remarkably poignant and moving.  

Chappelle is accused by the woke of “punching down” with his comedy, meaning that he’s a bully against the defenseless and weak, like the LGBTQ community. But Chappelle goes to great lengths in The Closer to point out the absurdity of this charge, as he observes the LGBTQ community’s enormous cultural power. Chappelle’s evidence for his claim is that the rapper Da Baby actually shot and killed someone in a Walmart in North Carolina and his career never wavered, but when he uttered homophobic remarks, the LGBTQ community quickly got him cancelled.

Nowhere is the woke’s cultural power so evident as it is when it comes to reviews of Chappelle’s own work. Sticks and Stones was adored by audiences who gave it a 99 rating on Rotten Tomatoes, whereas critics gave it a paltry 35% rating. You see, to the woke, especially those in the establishment media or those hoping to work in the establishment media, admitting Chappelle’s brilliance and genius is an impossibility because it’s the equivalent of a hate crime.

The woke approach with The Closer seems to be somewhat similar. I’ve read a few reviews of the show, all of them negative, but curiously enough at Rotten Tomatoes, while the audience rates The Closer at 96%, there is, as of this writing, no critical score listed at all, and only one review posted (it’s negative).  

It seems the woke are changing tactics regarding their boogie man Chappelle, and instead of signaling their virtue through their negative reviews, they’re simply ignoring him.

Unfortunately, Chappelle’s current deal with Netflix is up and I wouldn’t be surprised if they didn’t have him back. The woke wave is a tsunami and it has overtaken all of Hollywood. Even if it costs them money, these streaming behemoths would rather signal their virtue and “allyship” rather than give audiences what they want.

My recommendation is to go watch The Closer and enjoy Dave Chappelle’s brilliance and comedic genius while you can, because the woke are gunning for him, and as much as it pains me to say it, they just might get him.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2021