Bo Burnham’s Inside, perhaps the most widely acclaimed comedy special (or film, or whatever you want to call it) of the last however many years, launched on Netflix exactly one year ago today, on May 30, 2021. Both hilarious and sad, Inside captured the frazzled, isolated mood of what we at the time hoped was the late pandemic era; it also scathingly critiqued the utter emptiness of modern life and culture, while also acknowledging how Inside itself wasn’t able to transcend that artificiality. It’s very good and smart and funny but also probably not as good or smart or funny as its most positive reviews have made it out to be, and Burnham actually seems to anticipate that overly impressed response within the special itself. Overall it’s a neat trick that’s very much of its time, and unfortunately, as Covid has continued to rebound and culture has continued to rot, today is its time just as much as a year ago was. So it’s fitting that Burnham would release more Inside tonight, not just as an anniversary celebration, but as recognition that we’re not out of this pandemic just yet.
a year ago today, i released a special called inside. i’ve spent the last two months editing together material that i shot for the special but didn’t end up using. it will be on my youtube channel in one hour. i hope you enjoy it.
— Bo Burnham (@boburnham) May 31, 2022
Yep, Burnham released over an hour of previously unseen Inside outtakes on his YouTube channel right at 9 p.m. ET tonight. You can watch the full video here; he’s turned off the ability to embed it, so go straight to his YouTube channel to check it out. It is instantly familiar to anybody who watched Inside, but given that it’s explicitly a collection of outtakes, I’d imagine it doesn’t try to match the original special’s cohesive approach or overarching message. I guess I’ll find out when I get to watch the whole thing. In the meantime, you can watch it yourself, of course, by heading over to Burnham’s YouTube page.