Don’t Worry, ‘Make Happy’ With Bo Burnham on Netflix

It’s probably a coincidence that Bo Burnham’s latest stand-up comedy special, Bo Burnham: Make Happy, debuts on Netflix the same day The Lonely Island’s movie arrives in theaters.

Probably.

I say that only because everything Burnham does onstage is so meticulously planned and choreographed, I wouldn’t be surprised should I ever learn that the scheduling here is equally deliberate. In fact, Burnham pauses at several points during Make Happy to acknowledge his self-awareness and reveal the tricks of his trade. Think he’s riffing off the cuff? He finger-gun points in the air. Booooooiiiiiinng! Synched-up sound effects in effect. He follows that up with a joke about how his attempts at crowd work merely shoehorn names and facts Mad Lib style into his grander scheme of funny things.

“I’m not honest for a second up here!” Burnham reveals. “You want an honest comedian? See the rest of them.” Then he makes fun of “them” with the turn a phrase into a common premise.

So what is Burnham’s grander scheme?

What’s he up to onstage, anyhow?

Make Happy opens on Burnham waking up in a hotel room with the TV on, as well as full clown face makeup, complete with red foam nose – then follows him through trees, over rocks and down the streets of Port Chester, N.Y., to the Capitol Theatre. All the while, you hear what the audience hears; first an automated female’s voice repeating serious, grave facts about the world, followed by this: “The world is not funny.” Then a shrouded male figure onstage tells us entertainers aren’t here to entertain us, but to control us.

Enter Burnham stage left. Stage right, even!

Despite still being only 25, Make Happy marks Burnham’s third televised comedy special, and in each of his three hours committed to film, the young comedian has exhibited both a shrewd knowledge of those funnymen and women who have hit the stages before him, as well as a propensity for deconstructing the very nature of entertainment, and the relationship between performer and audience, between star and fans.

So yeah, funny coinky-dink Burnham has a new message for us just as The Lonely Island’s Andy Samberg, Jorma Taccone and Akiva Schaffer poke holes in the mythos of the modern-day pop star with their mockumentary, Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping.

Burnham’s live shows play like a mash-up of stand-up performance, rock concert and stage musical – with a dash of downstage confessional to really keep audience members on the edge of their seats.

After hyping up and then tricking his audience with a call-and-response routine set to music, he segues into a song, which becomes a rap, and Bo knows he’s following his own logic. “Yeah, this is almost musically incoherent at this point. Y’all ain’t never seen a comedy show like this in your f*%&ing life. And for good reason. It gets old after a few minutes. You’ll see.”

So he keeps things moving.

The keyboard, which catapulted him to stardom almost a decade ago, gets another workout, with songs about the straight white male privilege blues (its hypocrisy embodied in the lyrical refrain, “Can’t you just leave us alone, also no to the things you asked for”), and one that’s the antithesis to uplifting anthems such as “Roar” or “Brave” (Burnham suggests, “so maybe kill yourself?”)

A generation after Andrew Dice Clay made nursery rhymes naughty, Burnham plays the rhymes straight but raps them to sick beats. “A lesser comedian would have milked that for four verses. And a better comedian wouldn’t have done it at all,” Burnham notes afterward, ever conscious of the moment. “I’m right in the sweet spot.”

Burnham defends country music, sort of, before singing an ode full of pandering lyrics. At least they’re singing. Burnham has no use for Celebrity Lip Sync: “It’s the end of culture. Culture’s over, everybody. We lost,” he said. “How is this entertainment? F*%& these people.”

Curiously, that’s the one stance he takes where the audience loses its loyalty to him, not along for the ride. Apparently we have lost that culture war, Bo. I’m just as sorry about it as you are.

Burnham also has two songs in this hour about relationships: One highlighting the absurdity in what women really want in a man; the other, a she-said he-said dueling perspective on a breakup.

As for that full confessional moment.

Forty-five minutes into his hour, Burnham crouches at the front of the stage and asks to bring the house lights up.

But not after asking and answering the essential question about him and his show(s).

“But for real. What is it about? It’s about performing. I try to make my show about other things but it always ends up becoming about performing. I started performing very young, as a teenager, professionally. And as a comedian, what you’re supposed to do, you’re supposed to talk about what you know. And what I knew always was performing. So to talk about traffic or laundry felt incredibly disingenuous. But I worried that making a show about performing would be too meta. It wouldn’t be relatable to people that aren’t performers. But what I found is that I don’t think anyone isn’t.”

Everyone is performing now, thanks to the technology of social media. It’s not unique to Millennials or Burnham’s YouTube generation. He’s just one of the privileged few who have mastered the platform enough to gather the greater flock around him.

“I had a privileged life, and I got lucky, and I’m still unhappy,” Burnham jokes.

Or does he? Social media is a prison!!! Get out while you can!

Burnham closes by describing his own experience as an audience member watching Kanye West on tour, and how Yeezus went on a rant at the end of his performance. If Kanye can talk about his problems in a concert, why not Burnham? Even while making fun of that conceit, Burnham cannot stop himself from real talk. Forget too-small Pringles cans and too-large Chipotle burritos.

“The truth is my biggest problem is you,” he says. “I want to please you. But I want to stay true to myself. I want to give you the night out that you deserve, but I want to say what I think and not care what you think about it.”

For all of the mixed emotions, Burnham allows himself a coda after leaving the stage, not only to deliver one final message to us in song, but also to give himself the happy ending he’s looking for. Or a new beginning. Either way. Tearing down the fourth wall allows the light to come in.

We could use a lot more light right about now.

[Watch Bo Burnham: Make Happy 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.