‘Ron White: If You Quit Listening I’ll Shut Up’ On Netflix Still Putting The “Blue” In Blue Collar Comedy

Since the Blue Collar Comedy Tour first started in 2000, Texas native Ron White has always stood apart from the other three stand-up comedians as the odd man in.

Sure, Larry the Cable Guy is the definitive character act in the group headed by Jeff Foxworthy with Bill Engvall. But White, with a cigar in his hand and a tall glass of tequila always filled on the stool by his side onstage (a tequila brand he sells on his website, btw), remains the real character. He’s the drunk uncle of the group.

And not the fuzzy sweater, lovable slurring kind of drunk uncle, either. No, no, White proudly proclaims on his fifth stand-up comedy special, and first for Netflix, that at 61, he’s a “raging alcoholic.”

If You Quit Listening I’ll Shut Up opens with soundbites from White’s previous specials, then we see him onstage, in a crisp suit, revealing to his fans how fame and fortune has changed him. His answers are crass. Profane. And undeniably funny.

He’s a more believably real-life incarnation of The Beverly Hillbillies, growing up poor in dusty, rural Texas, only to strike it rich in comedy, and move in with his newest wife into a home they’ve built in Beverly Hills. While TV’s sitcom rednecks encountered cute culture clashes with their posh new neighbors, White regales us with how he has come to respect and almost admire the gay men in the West Hollywood bars near his home. More for how they don’t have to deal with marriage. Or didn’t use to, anyhow.

White, meanwhile, has survived both divorce and divorce lawyers, and has put a lot of thought into drunk-driving checkpoints, the handsomeness of Chris Hemsworth, and the “radical terrorist Canadian geese.”

Two years ago, White co-starred in Cameron Crowe’s one-and-done season of Roadies for Showtime. But why settle for fictional tall tales when you can sit back and enjoy White’s actual road stories.

In this hour, White regales his audience with anecdotes about a young fan approaching him at The Comedy Store in Los Angeles, about how he lost his virginity at 18 over and over again to prostitutes, his offbeat presidential ambitions, and even how he tried to overcome his anxiety with bedwetting as a child.

We keep hearing more comedians tell stories about the comedy business. For White’s part, he revisits a story he once told on SiriusXM a few years ago during the Just For Laughs Comedy Festival, which is about the week he opened for another comedian at the Punchline in Sacramento. But for our purposes, as well as the inner workings of how show business actually still works or doesn’t pay off for most comedians, the most telling part comes when White talks money. “Traditionally in American comedy clubs, there’s three acts. There’s an opening act, that makes between 100 and 200 a week for nine shows, the feature act — which is what I was — makes between 400 and 500 bucks for nine shows, and a headliner who can make absolutely anything depending upon who they are.”

The money sadly ain’t much better for aspiring stand-ups in 2018 than it was some two or three decades earlier for White.

But it sure helps to have a headliner believe in you like Foxworthy believed in White. And so, White closes by turning back time to talk about a weekend in December 1996, when White opened for Foxworthy in Las Vegas at the MGM Grand, while Engvall opened for Reba McEntire down the strip at Caesars Palace. Back then, having their names on Vegas marquees was living the dream.

Don’t wake White up just yet. He’s still having too much fun.

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 Ron White: If You Quit Listening I’ll Shut Up on Netflix