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Doing It Live Cuts Both Ways


What lessons should Netflix take from its live Katt Williams special and Tom Brady roast?

Woke Foke had come and gone, and all anyone on TikTok, Twitter, and morning-radio group chats could talk about was a different Netflix live event, one that streamed the night after Williams’s: the Kevin Hart–hosted roast of Tom Brady. It was controlled in every way — so clearly scripted and produced that certain video clips and sound cues were prepared to slot into specific lines, and so painstakingly milquetoast that the most dangerous overall stance was a bland repetition of transphobia about women’s sports. Specials are designed to represent an hour of comedy at its most honed, meticulous, thoughtfully directed, and well-wrought pinnacle, with the ability to cut, select, and dial in every frame so that it best serves what a comedian is trying to accomplish.

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