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Stand-up comedy continues to find success on streaming services, with numerous specials released every year. It’s a very free genre ofcomedy, where one can talk about their personal experiences and political views or even play back-and-forth with the audience. Some individuals, like Kevin Hart, Louis C.K., and Bill Burr, have found highly successful careers with multiple streaming specials, earning millions of fans around the world. While aNetflixcomedy special can often be a hit or miss, they are at least able to find an audience.
Matt Rifeis one of those chosen few. Late last year, he had his very ownMatt Rife: Natural Selectionshow, released to mixed reviews. And this year, he is back a second time withMatt Rife: Lucid - A Crowd Work Special. While the first was more of a rehearsed stand-up style, the other was supposed to be based around crowd work, hence the name. But this show received just as lukewarm reviews, albeit for completely different reasons.
Matt Rife’s Successful Social Media Career
Rife is a 28-year-old Ohioan who performed his first show at the young age of 15. He is unique in the current landscape of respectedstand-up comediansin that he became popular by posting his shows on YouTube up to 11 years ago, such asMatt Rife: Matthew Steven Rife, but most importantly, his snippets on TikTok and his YouTube shorts have seen tremendous success. Before his widespread Internet fame, however, Rife had a recurring role in the improvised rapping comedy showWild ‘n Out. It’s also interesting that a good portion of his audience, and those who come to his shows, are female. This is important, as a comedian must learn to cater to his audience.
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Rife’s preferred topics for comedy are varied: mainly relationship humor, acting out funny situations, and making light of living with disabilities (he has been clinically diagnosed with depression and anxiety disorder, but branches out to physical disabilities as well). His humor on his past smaller shows was relatively mild,rarely political or edgy, meant to appeal to as many people as possible. It was often sexual and crass at times, though. He said his biggest inspirations are Dave Chappelle, Ricky Gervais, and Dane Cook.
Matt Rife’s Questionable First Netflix Special
However,Rife’s humor changed radically once he got his own Netflix special. Cue the laugh tracks and repeated amused audience shots because his mostly female audience did not appreciate many of his jokes about conjugal violence, women belonging in the kitchen, and beauty and weight. He started with a joke about a woman having a black eye because she couldn’t cook well, and 80% of the audience stopped listening after that, understandably.
The rest of the specialwas not bad, but it was also very disorganized. Maybe it was related to the way that Rife catered his TikTok videos to a specific audience. He focused on the funniest and most easygoing jokes, leaving out the rest for a much smaller viewership that would watch his shows in their entirety. He also went from skit to joke without much of a connection in-between. Again, this can probably be blamed on the fact that the comedian became used to producing snippets, which need to be understood without context.
A Swing and a Miss for Matt Rife: Lucid - A Crowd Work Special
Matt Rife: Lucid - A Crowd Work Specialhas a specific focus on onestand-up genre: dreams and crowd work. This is a significant departure from his disheveled, overly rehearsed first special. The theme of dreams and sleep is broad enough that Rife can riff with a variety of subtopics, taking a liking to wet dreams with his preferred sexual jokes, which can work well with his female audience.
However,this one missed the mark just as well as his first special. Although Rife dulled down the misogynist jokes, the hyperspecific focus on the world of sleep and dreams just felt odd for his type of humor. It also felt surprisingly rehearsed, again, despite dealing with crowd work; it felt as if Rife would go on with his planned punchline, no matter what the audience’s response was. Now, of course, a comedian must write out his jokes in advance to entertain people for an hour or so. However, it takes a special talent to make it so that the parts flow together well and make it seem like the comedian comes up with jokes on the spot. And unfortunately, Rife failed at that withLucid.
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Matt Rife is far from a bad comedian. However, despite having done comedy for almost half his life, he still has much to learn between his newfound fame and catering to the right audience. It seems like the young comedian has taken his chance with Netflix for granted and attempted to shoot for the stars he looks up to, landing in the dark. He must find his flow between one-shot jokes and charged topics, as many comedians manage to, but with the right balance — and audience.Matt Rife: Lucid - A Crowd Work Specialis streaming onNetflix.
