There’s not much to the teaser, which makes sense, since, y’know, it’s a teaser. Just a bunch of clips of Chappelle on stage, an audience laughing, and then a few soundbites of Chappelle talking. It’s not even jokes, really, more him seemingly responding, once again, to those who have criticized him for victim-blaming and for his material about trans people. “Sometimes the funniest thing to say is mean,” Chappelle says in the teaser. “Remember, I’m not saying it to be mean; I’m saying it because it’s funny.”
Humor, of course, is subjective. Chappelle gave us the best stand-up special of 2020 with the YouTube short “8:46,” so he’s clearly still a master of the form. But it’s rarely funny to see a comedian complain about criticism, or people who don’t find them funny, or make lazy “triggered” comments, and that’s something Chappelle has done a little too much of lately. Hopefully he can move past that on The Closer, and that bit about being mean vs. being funny is just a quick aside that Netflix decided to highlight for the teaser.
Anyway: here’s that teaser, all 30 seconds of it. The Closer drops on Netflix in six days.
