Liberal media outlets dumped on comedian Bill Maher’s new HBO stand-up special, urging viewers to “SKIP IT.”
Reviewers at MSNBC.com, Decider, Salon, and Cracked slammed the special that came out Jan. 10, “Is Anyone Else Seeing This?” as “lazy” and rehashed. They also took issue with the comedian’s jokes that poked fun at far-left ideology.
“There’s nothing exciting here, and nothing you’re not already seeing or hearing from him on most other weekends in Real Time, so SKIP IT,” Decider’s Sean McCarthy wrote in his Monday review.
Maher’s special targeted the fringes on the right and left, mocking everything from MAGA to “woke” culture. He also took his share of digs at President-elect Donald Trump, saying he could possibly “blow up the world on the first day” and quipping about him getting his “ear pierced” in last year’s assassination attempt.
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McCarthy ripped the comedian for a lack of memorable or edgy material, stating that it doesn’t push the envelope for his viewers in any real way.
“Maher believes he has found a comfortable lane by claiming to be a centrist liberal who’s only seemed to move right-wing because the liberals have gotten ‘too woke,’” he said, adding, “It’s not so much a place for comedians so much as it’s a place for those Americans who’ve already established comfortable lifestyles for themselves and don’t want to be disrupted by anything outside of their bubble.”
“Real talk: Maher seems incapable or unwilling to listen or learn. Just like too many people radicalized by their social media feeds, Maher’s comedy is stuck in his own bubble,” he said, adding, “This is comedy for people who still post on Facebook, still forward email chains, and still watch his show.”
In a review titled, “Bill Maher serves up old, warmed-over beefs in new special,” MSNBC.com columnist Jacques Berlinerblau described the special as a “rather listless set.”
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“That’s partly because Maher’s positions on these issues are so well known that his punchlines failed to surprise. He also seems unwilling to put in the craftwork needed to make his stand-up material edgy or thought-provoking,” the reviewer explained.
Berlinerblau added that Maher isn’t even self-aware enough in his own special to critique the fact that he “seems to have transmogrified into an old, conservative White guy shaking his fist at Gen Z, new gender categories, EpiPens and anything else that didn’t exist in 1964.”
Cracked.com’s Matt Solomon savaged Maher’s special by comparing it to comedy from another entertainer he appeared to disdain.
“[T]he veteran comic makes the same lazy arguments Rob Schneider does anytime a podcast host offers him a mic and a chair: The Left is trying to take away his free speech, and everyone but the comic is crazy,” he wrote.
Solomon continued, “He hates victims, and yet the irony escapes him as he wails about all who would squash his free speech. (Another irony: At last check, no one has attempted to silence Bill Maher.)”
His review concluded with a plea for Maher to end his stand-up career. He wrote, “Back in May, Maher told Jerry Seinfeld that this HBO special might well be his last. With his TV show and podcasts doing well, maybe it’s time to move on. ‘After this year, I’m going to stop (doing stand-up),’ he pledged. After watching Is Anyone Else Seeing This, I have one question: Bill, can we get that in writing?”
Maher confirmed to CNN’s Jake Tapper that he was likely to retire from his stand-up career soon, though he insisted he’ll continue HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher.“
Salon.com’s senior critic Melanie McFarland described the special as “lazy comedy,” saying that it consisted of material that “better jesters composted years ago.”
McFarland mocked Maher, stating, “How’s this for breaking news? Maher hates cancel culture, which doesn’t exist, and ‘woke-ism,’ the exhausted right-wing specter none can define. Maher announces his professed support of the trans community in the same way every other hack comic does, in that he says the obligatory words to make the audience comfortable with the uninspired observations that follow them.”
Seemingly addressing complaints from progressives about his targeting of the far-left, Maher made clear in the special that he views Republicans, Trump and the political far-right as the greater threat to the country because of their refusal to accept the 2020 election defeat, but he added, “I don’t hold my tongue for anybody.”
“Don’t tell me the left hasn’t changed,” Maher said. “So you can threaten me with whatever label you want. I don’t bend the knee. If you do something goofy, I’m going to call you out, no matter where you are on the spectrum. I speak to a different group of people who are not ideologically captured by either side. Democrats, independents, and non-drooling Republicans, that’s my constituency.”
Maher also addressed transgender ideology, free speech, fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic, his past calls for President Biden to drop out of the race and more in the one-hour special.
