Make Happy

Bo Burnham performs on a stage that looks and sounds more like a pop concert than a comedy club, using choreographed lighting rigs, synthesizers, and backing tracks to question whether anyone on either side of the microphone is actually happy. He operates in a space of intense self-consciousness, mocking the very nature of live performance while executing it with theatrical precision. The show shifts from high-concept musical parodies to physical comedy, all built around a central tension between a performer’s desire for applause and his exhaustion with the audience.

Filmed at the Capitol Theatre in Port Chester, New York, and released on Netflix in 2016, the special caught Burnham at a transitional point. He was 25, already a decade into his career after starting as a teenage YouTube sensation, and experiencing severe panic attacks before going on stage. This performance anxiety bleeds directly into the material, particularly during the climatic, eight-minute auto-tuned rant modeled after Kanye West’s concert monologues. Instead of world peace or artistic integrity, Burnham uses the vocoder to cry out about the physical impossibility of fitting his hand inside a Pringles can and the tragedy of a poorly wrapped burrito.

Other segments include a country song that details the cynical marketing formula of modern stadium-country acts, a dramatic pantomime of making a sandwich while high versus while drunk, and a song about the cognitive dissonance of being a straight white male. Critics widely praised the show for its musical variety and its deconstruction of performance, though many noted the underlying melancholy. It marked Burnham’s final traditional stand-up tour before he stepped away from live performing for several years, ending on an intimate, acoustic note in a guest house that would later become the setting for his lockdown project.