Chelsea Handler's New Netflix Special Is Pretty Friggin' Good
The election of Donald Trump really did a number on the comedian Chelsea Handler.
“It was earth-shattering,” she said in a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter. “It woke me up to how easy things were for me.” Determined to not become “one of those people who stands by and doesn’t say anything,” Handler underwent a massive, multi-year self-improvement project, which she showcased in three, separate Netflix projects: the 2016 documentary series Chelsea Does, featuring hour-long episodes on topics like “marriage” and “racism”; her short-lived late-night talk show, Chelsea; and the 2019 documentary, Hello, Privilege. It's Me, Chelsea, a surface-skimming exploration into how white privilege operates in America.
For those who were watching, it was a lot to process—like catching up with a friend who recently got sober or started therapy. Handler seemed desperate to be taken seriously, to prove her progress to the audience. This need to be seen as self-aware culminated in 2020’s Evolution, Handler’s HBO Max special that dealt the kind of probing comedy that Hannah Gadsby and Neil Brennan are so good at. Unfortunately, the subtle, insightful style didn’t play to Handler’s strengths as a rowdy storyteller. It was yet another admirable but clumsy attempt at introspection.
Five years after her awakening, it was increasingly hard to see a path forward for Handler. Could she be both funny and self-aware? Doubts were rising—at least for me. In her new special, Revolution (out on Netflix on December 27), the veteran comedian shows she’s found a way. She proves just how far she has come by punching up and making fun of herself, and delivers the best stand-up performance of her career. Finally, the new and improved Chelsea Handler has arrived.
It's hard as hell to successfully make fun of yourself, which is why a lot of stand-ups, including a previous version of Handler, prefer to make fun of others. But nothing wins over an audience quite like a comedian who can take a joke, and Handler has never been more charming than when she is explaining her weak grip on basic astronomy.
Dressed in a chic, black jumper, with one hand resting casually in her pocket, Handler hilariously recounts how she assumed that “when the sun dropped down, it popped back up as the moon,” until she was 40 years old and saw them appear together in the sky during a trip to Africa. As Handler tells it, her ignorance alarmed her sister who began shouting about the moon’s role in the solar system, causing the comedian to respond coolly with: “Calm down. We are in the southern hemisphere. I don’t even know which moon you are talking about.” The story whips the audience into a frenzy, and they laugh alongside Handler as she repeatedly takes dead aim at herself in a controlled and punctuated storytelling style that oozes confidence.
Speaking of storytelling, Handler is still great at it. Throughout Revolution, she harnesses the power of detail to tell explosively funny anecdotes about a middle school cheerleading try-out that turned into a scoliosis diagnosis, and a sleep disturbance involving a stoned Handler, her dog Bernice (dressed in “a yellow negligé”), and a bleeding nipple—I won’t tell you whose. It should be noted that Handler’s pet material is, by far, the best part of Revolution. Her 10-minute story about her adopted Bernese mountain dog, Gary, has everything a box office hit needs: plot, tension, stakes, and multiple main characters including a villain (Handler), a hero (her assistant Tanner), and an underdog (the aforementioned Gary).
Even in her longest bits, Handler refrains from rambling. Her discussion on not wanting children features a joke every few seconds and, upon finding out from her doctor that she has the eggs of a 25-year-old, an excellent one-liner: “I told her she could take my eggs and turn them into a frittata for all I care.”
In her 2014 stand-up special, Uganda Be Kidding Me, Handler took a much more caffeinated approach. She sped through bits at a rapid clip, relaying details about her travels to the audience like she just bumped into them on the way to an event that she’s late to. While that head-spinning cadence might’ve helped Handler sell her “keep up, bitch”-style of party girl comedy to E!, it also got in the way of a good punchline, which relies on pacing and premise above all else. Handler finally slows down in Revolution. She uses pauses to her advantage. “I have rescued nine dogs in my life,” Handler says, before deliberately waiting for the audience to finish applauding then matter-of-factly tacking on “I’ve returned four of them.”
Even in her most agitated state, like when recalling her 23-year-old nephew Jakey offering to mansplain basketball to her, Handler keeps her cool. “You are in my mansion,” Handler says, emphasizing the words “my” and “mansion.” She pulls a similar trick when she reacts to her brother saying he had children out of concern for his legacy. “What legacy?” she asks in a sarcastic, bewildered tone. “Your legacy is that you are my brother.” Watching a thriving Handler confidently own her success in front of assorted family members made me excited for my 40s.
To the detriment of the set, Handler abruptly switches modes halfway through her performance, using a strange story about an encounter with an overconfident man in a captain’s hat as a springboard into a manifesto about toxic masculinity. “As a society,” she thunders, while strutting across the stage, “you all owe us a fucking apology.” Whether she’s right doesn't matter. The issue is one of scale. Her argument is too broad to be persuasive. Her point about how America’s “real heroes,” are its nurses, doctors, and flight attendants also fails to make an impact because it’s overly familiar.
Handler’s observations about the world are not as insightful or funny as her observations about herself. Unlike the men she makes fun of in Revolution, Handler is wise to her own bullshit. One of her best jokes is about having to wake up two hours early just so she can “de-cuntify myself”—that reveals more about the differences between the sexes than all of Handler’s tidy declarations combined.
Revolution finishes in an ode to Handler’s partner as well as the special's director, the comedian Jo Koy. There’s no doubt Koy deserves credit for helping Handler. The stage, the lights, the tight shots, and darkened theater—everything is set up to make Handler pop, and it’s an effective strategy. But in discussing their relationship so extensively and in such positively glowing terms, (not to mention holding Koy up as the standard to which all men should aim) Handler puts herself, her relationship, and the audience in a tight spot. You can’t help but wonder if the pair is still together, and a career-defining special like Revolution should leave its audience with more to think about than a couple’s relationship status.
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