The Leather Special

Amy Schumer walks onto the Denver stage encased in a skin-tight black leather jumpsuit, immediately acknowledging the sweaty, regrettable choice of wardrobe. The attire is a nod to the grandiose stand-up specials of the 1980s, but the material is firmly rooted in the self-deprecating, hyper-explicit personal history that made her a household name in the mid-2010s. Much of the hour relies on her familiar targets: the indignities of dating, the double standards of female beauty, and detailed, graphic oversharing about her physical health and sex life.\n\nFilmed at the Bellco Theatre in Denver, Colorado, The Leather Special arrived at a transitional moment in Schumer’s career. Coming off the success of her movie Trainwreck and her Peabody-winning sketch show, she was among the first megastar comics to secure a massive Netflix deal. On stage, she plays with this shift in status, joking that she has become “very rich, famous, and humble.” Some of the best-received bits examine the absurdity of her new reality, such as a viral topless photo that commentators repeatedly described as “brave,” a term she notes is never a compliment when you are nude.\n\nThe special is perhaps best remembered not for its actual jokes, but for the online firestorm that followed its March 2017 release. It became the target of a coordinated campaign by online trolls who flooded Netflix with one-star reviews, a backlash Schumer publicly shrugged off as an attempt to silence her. While critics offered generally lukewarm to positive marks for her transition to stadium-level comedy, the sheer volume of negative audience reviews contributed to Netflix’s decision to scrap its star-rating system altogether shortly after.