The Bird Revelation: Dave Chappelle's only not-funny special

Dave Chappelle is one of the greatest comedians of all time and his specials easily round out at least 3 of my top-10 stand up specials of all time. I rewatch most of them and laugh my butt off even though I already know the punchlines - he is in a very small club the likes of which contains only a few people like Louis CK, Bill Burr, and maybe Jim Gaffigan.

However, that doesn't mean that everything the man does is going to end up being top drawer and this special, which I somehow managed to miss until recently, is a real dud if you ask me.

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I don't know if Dave has just run out of material or perhaps tried to release too much material all at once but I don't think I laughed even once throughout this entire special. Equanimity, which was released just a little while before this one was superior in every way and is absolutely hilarious. This stuff, which was performed in a rather small venue in Los Angeles (he certainly could have filled a much larger venue and I wonder why he bothered with such a small club,) seems like it is the "B sides" to all of his great jokes that were in the other one.

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For one thing, Dave gets entirely too philosophical in this one and he almost seems "preachy" which is something I hate in any comedian or celebrity in general. I think I speak for most normal people when I say that I don't watch any stand-up special in order to learn something or to get life advice, I just want to be entertained.

I have a theory on why it is that Dave's comedy might be taking a turn for the worse and that is that he has run out of real life experiences to turn comical and regale us with his very unique wit that made me fall in love with his performances in the first place.

In The Bird Revelation Dave stays completely stationary on a stool near the front of the crowd for the entire performance while he chain smokes and proceeds to go on and on about racism and how downtrodden minorities are. This is probably coming at a bad time because we have been listening to this sort of stuff from the media and every form of social media for years now and for me and many other non minorities, getting lectured about this from a multi-millionaire minority has gotten tiresome.

To be fair to Dave, this special was originally performed back in 2017, which was before the "racism marketplace" became over-saturated to the point of critical mass. Therefore, it could possibly be a bit my fault because I am getting to it so late.

Even the audience doesn't seem terribly amused as the laughter, which is normally deafening at a Chappelle show comes sporadically and at times almost seems forced as Dave slaps the mic into his leg time and time again as some sort of indication that "it is time to laugh now."

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There are times that the audience almost seems uncomfortable as they wait for the show to stop being a lecture and to start being a comedy show. Then, the next thing you know after not laughing at all for 40 minutes, the show is over.

Should I watch it?

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I still would say that this is worth watching but simply for research purposes so that you can see that even the best fail from time to time. This isn't funny, but it does make Dave appear more human since everything else he has been involved in up to this point has been tears-in-your-eyes hilarious. Of course if you are not interested in seeing the failure of an otherwise epic personality, then you should probably give this one a miss.