Bill Burr talks a whole lot about men in his new comedy special “Drop Dead Years,” which debuted on Hulu on Friday. Why is it, he wonders aloud, that only men “drop dead,” usually between the ages of 49 and 61, sometimes while manscaping “in the upstairs bathroom while listening to AC/DC”? How come “men aren’t allowed to be sad”? “We’re allowed,” he continues, “to be one of two things: mad or ‘fine.’ That’s it.” If you want to see sad men doing sad things in their natural sad habitat, Burr suggests, visit your local Guitar Center.
Burr is also thinking about men in much more personal terms. “Drop Dead Years” opens up with the comedian, offstage, reflecting candidly:
It’s kind of a weird thing to be over 50 and realize how f—-d up you are. Like, I thought I did stand-up because I loved comedy. And then what I really figured out is that, no, that’s not why I did it. I did stand-up because that was the easiest way to walk into a room full of a bunch of people that I didn’t know and make everybody like me. All of the way I’ve moved through the world has always been like, ‘Where’s the place I have the least chance of being hurt?’
Bill Burr is a therapeutic work in progress. He’s bravely figuring himself out … in public. The process, however, is not free of contradictions. Nor is it going very smoothly.
In “Drop Dead Years,” as in previous specials, he copiously mocks women, feminists, gays, liberals, trans people, overweight people, etc. And while the results are often very funny, this sure is an odd way to get “everybody” in the room to like him.
The response to his controversial “Saturday Night Live” monologue of 2020, in which he lit up “cancel culture,” is a case in point. As is his postelection 2024 “SNL” appearance, when he counseled women not to wear pantsuits like Kamala Harris did. Instead, the ladies who seek elected office should “whore it up a bit.”
What truly separates Burr from the manosphere bros is that he appears to be making an earnest attempt at introspection.
It’s tempting to situate a comedian like Burr in the present comedic “manosphere.” That would be the dank man cave where Joe Rogan, Tony Hinchcliffe, Theo Von and others trash liberal pieties, garner immense crowds and earn success and influence in the process. Like them, Burr’s got the stage rage. He’s got the confrontational “I’m so mad my heart is about to explode!” affect. He too delights in (rhetorically) coldcocking minorities.
But Burr is different. He’s not only older than these boys, he is infinitely more intelligent. A heady gag in “Drop Dead Years” about KKK members riding in the HOV lane reminds us that Burr is a thinking man’s comic in the style of George Carlin. He’s also an exceptionally skilled physical actor. He uses his body, pasty white face and bald dome (which shines like a diamond under the stage lights) in ways that few can rival: I especially appreciated his imitation of a man dropping dead out of a golf cart.
And then there’s what we might call Burr’s balance. He’s not averse to punching up. In an interview with NPR’s Terry Gross this past week, the comic set his sights on Elon Musk. “I just refuse to believe,” Burr declared, reflecting on the billionaire’s Inauguration Day salutes, “that it was an accidental, two-time ‘Sieg heil.’”
Yet what truly separates Burr from the manosphere bros is that he appears to be making an earnest attempt at introspection. As the opening comments in this latest special suggest, Burr is doing the work, limning the pain, trying to be a better husband and dad. He’s boldly marching into the aforementioned room — a “room,” I might add, that streams to a few million people — and bleeding out.
Burr’s asking questions. Why can’t men wrap themselves in an afghan, sit in a corner and brood like women can? Why can’t men be sad? The problem is that, like Dave Chappelle, he also demands to know why he can’t use a homophobic slur anymore. His public therapeutic turn, with all of its contradictions, is equally evident in the NPR interview with Gross. One second he’s decimating Musk’s “laminated face” and the next (like, literally one second later), he’s talking about why he hates liberals. One second he’s confronting his flawed masculinity; moments later, he’s subjecting Gross to the type of off-the-shelf manosphere rebuttals that are guaranteed to drive liberal women, among others, to distraction. (The normally serene Gross, for her part, at some points low-key loses her patience with Burr’s evasions and interruptions.) Burr is doing the work, limning the pain, trying to be a better husband and dad. Bill Burr is extremely funny. But politically, the man is completely incomprehensible. In terms of psychic self-awareness, I don’t think he’s quite “there” yet (wherever that may be). Admirably, he’s realized that he performs his comedy to avoid getting hurt. It therefore boggles the mind that he seems to make no effort to interrogate whether and how his jokes, broadcast to multitudes, might hurt other people, whether that’s gay men, or women bemoaning Harris’ election loss (and their personal freedoms). The closing sequence of “Drop Dead Years” provides a clue as to how Burr may presently resolve all this psychic tumult. A few moments earlier, he had mentioned that he was touched inappropriately as a child (“I got touched as a kid”). Now the credits have rolled, we’re in the alley behind the theater. Away from the crowd. Everything’s quiet. Burr is sitting on the stoop of the stage door. His buddy is eating a sandwich and drinking a beer. Burr is smoking a cigar. It’s a good cigar. Maybe, the moment suggests, men achieve psychic resolution by being alone with other men.
Jacques Berlinerblau is a professor of Jewish civilization at Georgetown University. 
