Bo Burnham Made the Best—And Hopefully Last—Pandemic Special

Everything we can’t stop loving, hating, and thinking about this week in pop culture. [Manage newsletters]( [View in browser]( [Image] with Kevin Fallon Everything we can’t stop loving, hating, and thinking about this week in pop culture. This Week: - Hopefully the last pandemic content we’ll ever review. - Remember when Hillary Duff solved homophobia? - You need to be watching Hacks. - Behold the French unauthorized Céline Dion biopic. (Really.) - Jessica Chastain as Tammy Faye Baker is gay rights. Bo Burnham’s Pandemic Special Really Is That Good Before Thursday night, when I sat down to watch comedian/actor/filmmaker Bo Burnham’s[Bo Burnham: Inside special on Netflix](, I would sooner have thrown my TV out the window and occupy my time doing dumb things like “reading a book” or “discovering a hobby” than watch another piece of content [created during and about the pandemic](. Now that I’ve seen Bo Burnham: Inside—a brilliant, maddening, and transformative piece of art-meets-comedy-meets-commentary—I officially make that pledge. This is it. Inside is the perfect punctuation on the grand quarantine TV experiment. It’s at once an exclamation point, a question mark, and an ellipsis to a maddening, sad, and paradigm-shifting time of our existence. After this, no more. The world is reopening. Inside is the perfect special to look back and reflect at the dark tunnel behind us as we move, some of us cautiously and some of us as if shot out of a cannon, into the light. Burnham is both a peculiar talent and[a bit of a wunderkind](. His comedy career began on YouTube when he was 16, when his comedy songs went viral to the tune of 300 million views. That earned him a Comedy Central record deal. At age 18, he became the youngest person to record a comedy special for the channel. A[plum role in The Big Sick]( buoyed his acting career, but his biggest critical success was writing and directing the[achingly brilliant feature Eighth Grade]( in 2018—somehow capturing one adolescent girl’s angst to perfection despite, at the time, being a 27-year-old man. Last year, his supporting role[in Promising Young Woman]( was championed as expert Nice Guy casting. His lip sync performance to[Paris Hilton’s “Stars Are Blind”]( in the film gave the Oscar-winning movie’s audiences enough serotonin to make it through the rest of the pandemic. He wrote, performed, directed, edited, and scored Inside by himself over a span of months, during which, in a bit of trivia that is as impressive as it makes me want to puke with jealousy, he turned only 30. Now, that 30 year-old produced what might the smartest retrospective and most bizarre distillation of the time in which we all went mad, vacillating between wise and unhinged as he leans on the forms that sparked his career—vlogging, musical parodies, wry stand-up—and hurls them through the looking glass to create something as shell-shocked and evolved as we all feel right now. It’s cathartic, but it’s also so triggering and painful you want to crawl out of your skin while watching. By the end, you might wrap yourself up in your own discarded epidermis, like a macabre comfort blanket protecting your newly exposed nerves. He films the whole thing alone in a claustrophobic room. The series of sketches, songs, and music videos touch on everything from corporate brand activism to privilege and accountability, white women’s Instagrams, Jeff Bezos’ greed, sexting and horniness, race, and a prudent question that raised itself over the last year of intense discourse: “Can anyone shut the fuck up?” In one bit, he jokingly illustrates his approach as the center of a Venn diagram between Malcolm X and Weird Al. More seriously, he addresses the audience at the top of the special, saying, “I hope this special can maybe do for you what it’s done for me in the last couple months, which is distract me from the feeling of wanting to put a bullet in my head with a gun.” “Look, I made you some content!” he belts in one of the first songs. In another, when he frequently laments, “What the fuck is going on?” he inserts a laugh track to insert some levity, or maybe irony, as he narrates the bleak state of affairs. “The world is so fucked up. Systematic oppression. Income inequality. The other stuff. There’s only one thing I can do about it, while being paid and the center of attention...healing the world with comedy. Making a literal difference, metaphorically.” The trick to making this work is Burnham’s chameleonic abilities—or, maybe less generously, his tall, young, attractive, white-boy capacity for being a blank slate. Even as the months wear on and his hair and beard grow grizzlier, he’s able to morph nimbly between the various personas—and manias—he uses to mirror our own kaleidoscopic experience. He delivers some of it as an Instagram thot posing for thirst traps. Other times, he channels a perky kid show host. In some sketches, he mocks talking heads in documentaries. He’s a carnival barker. A rocker losing his mind. A sad comedian. In one moment, he’s in control, making astute commentary and seemingly motivated by his work. And then the next, he’s suffering an emotional breakdown. What is performance and what is voyeuristic when the pain we’re watching is almost uncomfortably real? Maybe not being able to tell is the point. That’s something, too, I think we all went through. When you’re incredibly depressed and struggling, it takes a lot of energy to perform being normal and functioning. Not that they need to, but no one appreciates that. The subject matter of the special acts as a greatest hits of the pandemic’s peaks and valleys. There’s an authenticity to its very intimate, very personal approach that shields it, in some ways, from the criticism aimed at other pandemic TV shows, which were too often indulgent, patronizing, or mostly meaningless. The funny thing is that you could lob those same criticisms at this special, to the point that Inside almost is self-aware about those pitfalls. There’s a meticulous inelegance to it in that way, a dichotomy that may best describe the traumatizing unknown of what we went through as well as the hopeful unease of where we’re going. It’s a pretty amazing achievement. And I hope to never see anything like it again. Happy Pride to Hillary Duff! It’s the wonderfully awful [time of the year](, when everything from my toothpaste to my toilet paper to my nightly burrito—you try living above a Chipotle—are festooned with rainbow packaging and maxims about [pride, equality, love, and acceptance](. Thank you, Charmin. Twitter accounts for snack crackers are sentiently proclaiming their activism in support of the LGBT+ community, and my bank has sent several mass emails about how much I matter, which is certainly a different tune than they were singing last month when I missed a credit card payment. Streaming services and content platforms have curated film and TV series spotlighting LGBT content, as if I don’t know where to find an episode of Golden Girls at all times, in a pinch. It is the One Month that I get to check out at Duane Reade and see a bonafide, real-life gay person on a magazine cover. Representation! Listen, I would rather weigh in on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict than get embroiled in the annual, insufferable discourse about the [cynical commercialization of Pride Month](, the brief tokenization of visibility, and who, what, and how much leather bondage [belongs at marches and parades](. Let me drink my roadie of vodka soda, dance to a cacophony of Lady Gaga songs booming from various speakers, and get sunburned while scrolling through thirst traps in peace, as the revolutionists intended. That is all to say there is exactly one piece of inspiring LGBT content that matters to me, and, like many queer millennials, I revisit it fondly once a year. Let us never forget when Hillary Duff told us it’s not cool to call things “gay” as an insult. [Alternate text] Back in 2008, the community’s one true ally, Lizzie Maguire, filmed a PSA for the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network’s (GLSEN) campaign to [eradicate the phrase “that’s so gay”]( from casual conversation. ([Watch it here](.) The spot features Duff clothes shopping and overhearing two girls trying on clothes. One says the other’s top looks “so gay.” “You know, you really shouldn’t say that,” Duff, the first LGBT superhero, no matter what Marvel says, interrupts. To say something is gay when you mean it’s bad “is insulting,” she schools them. “What if every time something was bad, everybody said, ‘That’s so ‘girl wearing a skirt as a top?’” You see, not only was the girl casually problematic, she was wearing a skirt as a top. Anyway, she quickly disintegrated into a pile of humiliated ashes, and Hillary Duff defeated homophobia then and there. The thing is, I’m only writing all this with a hint of sarcasm. Back in 2008, a PSA like this was huge. And while there have been noble, emotional, and incredibly effective campaigns over the years tackling things like anti-gay violence, the startling LGBT suicide rates, and trans rights, the attempt to raise awareness about an issue that seemed so mundane but was so harmful in its mainstream existence was profound. It turns out that growing up with “that’s so gay” as an insult sucks. Who’d have guessed? The phrase integrated into accepted conversation to the point that even the least homophobic among us—even the gayest among us, to be honest—used it with abandon, completely unaware that each time it was said, it fortified an environment for more extreme anti-LGBT harassment, bullying, and violence to perpetuate. So Happy Pride to Hillary Duff, and Hillary Duff only. Hacks, Somehow, Keeps Getting Better As a lifelong [Designing Women enthusiast](, it’s been incredibly gratifying to watch the “[Jean Smartaissance](” bring such attention to the career-long brilliance of Jean Smart. I don’t subscribe to the notion that something you watch or see can “turn you gay,” except for the fact that I firmly suspect watching four women in skirt suits with shoulder pads that would protect them against the Atlanta Falcons’ defensive line delivering feminist monologues in between interior decorating gigs as an impressionable middle schooler did, in fact, turn me gay. To now see the actress who [played the inimitable Charlene Frazier Stillfield]( earn the best reviews of her career for the one-two punch of her scene-stealing work on Mare of Easttown and then the most vibrant showcase she’s ever had in Hacks? That’s Pride. The HBO Max series about a Joan Rivers-esque comedian in the sunset of her career—but who will run to the damn horizon herself and heave the sun back into the air if that’s what it takes to stay working—has morphed from a funny and enjoyable series buoyed by Smart’s electrifying performance into, genuinely, the best comedy currently airing on TV. Last week’s strange and surprisingly poignant duo of episodes—co-star Hannah Einbinder as Ava in a thrilling, almost elegiac whirlwind Vegas romance, followed by her dam-breaking bonding session with Smart’s Deborah at a convalescence spa—elevated the show to a whole new level. They injected unexpected humanity and pathos into what had been a comedically caustic (in a good way!) series. The two episodes that were released this Thursday continue that nimble threading of emotion into the show’s dark comedy. There’s nothing better than bingeing a show as it’s just hitting its stride. You want to be an ally? Support Jean Smart for Pride. My Heart Will Go On and On (For Aline Dieu) The lineup for this year’s Cannes Film Festival was [announced this week](, and, wow, what a jaw-dropping assemblage of filmmakers, creative talent, and hotly anticipated projects. And none of them matter, because screening out of competition is the French film Aline, the Voice of Love, a biopic of Céline Dion that uses her songs and her life story, but not her name, and is the only piece of cinema I can possibly imagine caring about in the next year, if not decade. [Alternate text] The trailer for this is insane. ([Watch it here](.) I was so convinced I was suffering a stroke while watching this, I started psychosomatically smelling burnt toast. A true return to normalcy means a return to mess, and for that, I’m so grateful to my singing idol, who is apparently now not Céline Dion, but Aline Dieu. The Oscar For Best Press Promo Photo Goes to... This is a photo of Jessica Chastain as Tammy Faye Baker [in an upcoming biopic](, and it’s taken all the willpower I can muster to not print it out and walk the streets of New York City shoving it in people’s faces and screaming, “HAVE YOU SEEN THIS?!?” Attention must be paid. [Alternate text] [Alternate text] - Kennedy Center Honors: The best tribute event of the year honors Debbie Allen, Garth Brooks, and Dick Van Dyke. (Sun. on CBS) - Loki: You’d all watch this new Marvel series [Alternate text] - Vanderpump Dogs: Every reality-TV obsessive has his limits. (Wed. on Peacock) - The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It: AKA the excuse Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson used for doing this second sequel. (Fri. in theaters and on HBO Max) - Lisey’s Story: Turns out the rocky track record of Stephen King adaptations stays rocky even when King is adapting his work himself. (Fri. on Apple TV+) Advertisement [Facebook]( [Twitter]( [Instagram]( © Copyright 2021 The Daily Beast Company LLC 555 W. 18th Street, New York NY 10011 [Privacy Policy]( If you are on a mobile device or cannot view the images in this message, [click here]( to view this email in your browser. To ensure delivery of these emails, please add emails@thedailybeast.com to your address book. If you no longer wish to receive these emails, or think you have received this message in error, you can [safely unsubscribe](.