New Netflix special impresses Suiter

Andrew Suiter, Staff Writer

Dave Chappelle’s newest Netflix special “Sticks and Stones” is a comedic masterpiece.

This marks his fifth special with the platform after his previous specials “Equanimity,” “The Bird Revelation,” “The Age of Spin,” and “Deep in the Heart of Texas.”

Chappelle’s newest special manages to top his previous specials phenomenally, and as a major Chappelle fan, I can say that the special exceeded my expectations beyond belief.

His special has themes similar to his previous ones and his numerous monologues from his early 2000s program, Chappelle Show.

Chappelle manages to touch on topics most other comedians touch on his friends, his general day-to-day life and his family. Chappelle also manages to cover controversial topics such as sexuality, censorship, politics, school shootings, Kevin Hart’s Oscars situation, Michael Jackson, Cancel Culture and others from the past year.

One topic of note that he brought up was the controversy involving “Empire” actor Jussie Smollett and how he reacted to the situation.

Another topic Chappelle was his interactions with the standards and practices office of Comedy Central back when he worked on the Chappelle Show.

He talks about certain words he could and could not get away with saying. Chappelle manages to toe the line and do what every comedian should, which is make good jokes.

This special, much like Chappelle’s previous stand-up specials, has been seen as controversial and detrimental and received backlash from multiple publications like Vice, Slate, Buzzfeed News and Vox.

Critiques note that Chappelle’s special can be skipped or shouldn’t be supported.

I have found the opposite and, in the past week, I’ve discussed with my friends how much we like the special.

I’ve seen multiple people discuss how much they enjoyed the special, whether they be fellow comedians, entertainers or celebrities.

I found that these publications have taken Chappelle’s words too seriously and overlooked the fact that it’s a comedy special and not a manifesto.

I found it funny that the critic score on Rotten Tomatoes stands at 23 percent while the audience score stands at 99 percent showing that people enjoyed it more than some of these publications are saying.

All in all, I have to say that I thoroughly enjoyed Chappelle’s special and I’d give it a 10 out of 10.

I found that this special to be another reason to cement Chappelle as a comedy great, much like Richard Pryor, Lenny Bruce, Bill Hick and many others.

I also recommend the secret epilogue, which can be found after the credits of Chappelle’s special.

The epilogue shows off a Q and A session with Chappelle and his audience. It also gives some extra insight to the jokes Chappelle makes.