ngl the optics of the special are so belaboured and concertedly detailed that i lost all interest in whether or not the meltdown in question was genuine or not
maybe that makes me a bad person, but also fuck this guy for promising slice of life and dishing out overproduced arthouse (idgaf if that's my fetish in any other context)

he was pretending to be funny 😔

could you elaborate on that johnny? i think i understand what you mean, but at the same time it's like, he was trying to make it look professionally shot so i dont get what the issue is

also ryus hahah

oops sorry i editlaborated, but yh I felt the whole thing had a stagedness to it that felt stilted and unnecessary given the setting. more/longer single takes, fewer Choice angles and maybe a little less lighting and meticulous cleanliness that combined to give his literal home the atmosphere of any clinical studio, and I'd feel more comfortable investing in the authenticity of his pathos ygm

I personally feel that the uncomfortable dichotomy of what you’re talking about was what gave the special its unique atmosphere

Like that’s literally the point of it. Feel like he touches on that especially with the moments where he has nature scenes on the projector. And where he talks/songs about the digital space being more comfortable for people than irl. He’s stuck in that and expressing his discomfort with it. So it makes sense to me that his home feels clinical. The viewer is not supposed to feel cozy

Album Rating: 1.5

"do you really think he was pretending to have a meltdown foggy?"



i'm not entirely sure what he was trying to do, to be honest. Is he acting out how he feels someone who is completely isolated would behave? Is it a composite of himself and other people's borrowed experiences?



He does try to present a very specific vibe, but it all feels a bit manipulative, especially when you know that it's his guest house and after the day's shooting he probably goes to the main house for supper with his girlfriend.

@colton I mean if you want to be super literal about it yeah, of course you can just go outside. Bo suffers from anxiety and panic attacks which he talks about in the special, caused him to retire from stand up - and the special literally ends with him just ‘walking outside’ only to be met with the same anxiety that caused him to stay inside. It’s not just about the pandemic

Lol foggy i get you but i almost feel like you’re saying that Bo has to feel terrible all the time in order for their mental illness to be legitimate. And that would be an odd take

No supper for you, Bo! You have a special to shoot and it must be authentic!

He teases himself and questions the idea of authenticity relentlessly throughout the whole special

am sure there's a lot more than i remember re. self-aware touches and so on (have not watched this since 2020), but i think the problem behind the gripe here is that i found this a) not particularly funny and b) not expository of anything i didn't previously consider largely self-evident re. liminal semi-realities etc.. if literally the point of it is to simply represent that state then, well, full marks for execution but I'd still say that simply representing something that literally the entire audience understood inside out before pressing play is at best dull and at worst an opportunist zeitgeist clutch. i don't know which side of that argument I'd favour tbh and would *love* to cut this some slack and root for it as a compelling personal snapshot or whatever, but since Bo Burnham The Human Who Exists Outside Of CLEVER Interpolations Of Collective Experience Within A Comic Performative Canvas was apparently too busy editing and shooting this thing, that's a no
...is probably the deal idk, i am not rewatching this

Album Rating: 1.5

Fair enough, however just because someone has bona fide anxiety doesn't mean I have to buy that anything they do cannot be contrived.



Edit: Let's be honest he is peddling some "big let's get real moments" so I feel it's ok to demand something from this that I think is lacking

Johnny i appreciate your comment and i think it touches on why so many people had such a poor reaction to this - they perceived it as condescending/not presenting any new discourse - i didn’t get the vibe from this at all that it was trying to be woke or prophetic in some way - just the opposite - it is presenting the anxiety-ridden mind of an artist while touching on social issues that we all ‘know about’ and visually/somatically representing how we deal with those issues, or rather, how we deal with *not being able to do anything about them*

Album Rating: 4.5 | Sound Off

>why so many people had such a poor reaction to this



I'm just wondering why those people are still talking about this. They're like 'I thought it would be, y'know, different, but it wasn't, and this disappointment has still not left me and I need to share my thoughts."



But I think Bo would really appreciate that therapeutic need.

I mean to be fair, they’re not - i bumped the thread

norma do not deprive egarran of 180 days' worth of strawmen i beg of thee

Album Rating: 1.5

Oof now that's an incisive comment lol

I don’t respond to begging - bribery, on the other hand…

Album Rating: 4.5 | Sound Off

Yes you bumped but people still seized the chance to hate on it. Surely that's not a strawman?



Oh noes now I'm doing it too

Album Rating: 4.0

also appreciative of Johnny’s take, and the review tbh, great counterpoints to how I feel about this.



It’s an interesting conundrum though in that because I recall feeling profoundly moved or some bollocks when I first saw the thing in a “hey YES that is how my experience of the bad thing felt” kinda way that reading the counter-take of “btw this is lowest common denominator zeitgeist chasing hot air that only dumb dumb self-centred people would find value in” immediately demeaning/putdowny/someothernotnicefeeling even though I get that the criticism is directed at the art and artist rather than those who enjoyed it (also not directing this rambling rant thing at Johnny or fog or anyone specifically as there’s obvs more nuance to what you good people are saying). Idk, I find it’s a weirdly easy piece of work to get emotionally invested in and then difficult to detach yourself from when people are hurling well reasoned and genuinely not at all mean spirited criticisms at it as a piece of music which perhaps is what has led to some of the heat around the debate (like, the feeling is a weird “if you criticise this art and my enjoyment of it then you by extension are not respecting or acknowledging how fucking depressed I got in the whole pandemic thing”, which I know is not what the takes are intending to do, but is a feeling that I occasionally feel seeing the critics do the thing).

Album Rating: 4.5 | Sound Off

Well said. I do believe the emotional investment part of it can really turn people off.