Bo Burnham’s Inside

2020 was one of the worst years of my life, and I’m sure a lot of you can say the same. Bo Burnham’s Inside is the perfect representation of what 2020 was like. It made us cry, it made us laugh, it made us confused, it made us depressed and it baffled us with the absolute absurdity of it.

Bo’s skits and clever songs feel eerily relatable; they perfectly distilled our 2020 experiences into an hour and a half comedy special. Inside will not leave you rolling on the floor laughing, but it will make you go on a self-reflective and entertaining journey.

What is Inside?

Inside is a comedy special by Bo Burnham, shot and produced entirely in the comfort of his house. He spent the year locked up, surrounded by the four walls of his room, working tirelessly on bringing us this amalgamation of cleverly-worded lyrical songs, short sketches and sudden bursts of emotions and thoughts.

Bo struck gold with each of his songs. They’re as hilarious as they are deep and philosophical. He tackles a wide variety of topics with them. From poking fun at Jeff Bezos’ status as a world dominator, to the legality of hiring unpaid interns, to coming to terms with Bo’s own anxiety issues, and the funniest one yet, using his white privilege and his comedy to save the world from the issues that plague it. This is what makes Inside such an entertaining watch, Bo’s ability to tackle a wide variety of subjects.

“It’s like everything happened all at once” Bo sings in Comedy, a song about the possibility of using the power of comedy for good, and it makes fun of the slew of white comedians and public figures who jump on the bandwagon and try to piggyback real life social issues to boost their own public status.

The meat of the show are its songs, but most of them are followed by a few moments of hilarious sketches. A few of them makes fun of online content creators such as a reaction video that goes on a loop and he starts reacting to his reaction. Another favorite bit of mine is when he pretend to be a gaming streamer and does a let’s play of a game version of Inside, where his character is locked in his room and does nothing but burst in tears. He later comments that the game is boring, but it’s like Death Stranding, it’s supposed to be boring; that line had me in stitches.

A vaudevillian anthem called Welcome to the internet was my favorite song of the bunch, and it really captures the spirit of being constantly bombarded with everything that the internet offers you while being locked inside during quarantine. The internet gave us everything, all of the time, from social media posts, depressing news articles, cooking tips and false marketing ads. It was overwhelming spending most of your day browsing the internet while being stuck at home and this song feels too similar to that, it alternates between highs and lows, fast and slow, exactly how a night spent online feels like.

This review is starting to feel like a retread of what the special is, and I’m worried about spoiling it for you. The best way to watch Inside is to go into it blind, so make sure to fire up your Netflix account right now and dedicate an hour and a half of your time for it. It’ll be worth it.

Overall,

Inside isn’t just an entertaining and innovative comedy special, it’s also a must watch. Now that 2021 is almost over and the pandemic is about to be a thing in the past, it’s important to reflect on what we had to go through for the last 15 months or so. What better way to do that than with a comedy special? And Bo Burnham pulls it off spectacularly. The songs are catchy and fun to listen to, the lyrics are hilarious and the sketches are absolute genius.

If you had the option of watching just one show this year, then make it this one. My only gripe with it is that it’s not as funny as I hoped it to be, but it doesn’t need to be. While other comedy specials are funnier, none of them would stick with me half as much as Inside did.

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Bo Burnham’s Inside’s Score

9/10