Bo Burnham: Inside (2021)

My latest Thanksgiving tradition is to watch Inside by Bo Burnham (available on Netflix) every year around the holiday. I have the soundtrack, too - which I like to listen to - but there's a lot you don't get unless you watch the feature. Not just the visuals, but shorter snippets and spoken sketches, too. You should definitely watch it first, in its entirety, to get the full effect. Then you can sample its tracks piecemeal, as your inspiration dictates, with knowledge of how it all fits into context.

My experience sharing it so far is that this comedy special is divisive (so it's okay if you hate it - you wouldn't be the first), but honestly I think it's brilliant. I don't know what that says about me - I might be biased, as somebody who has lived as a hikikomori (shut-in). But I think it's the best thing to have come from the pandemic.

I worry that it might be heavily dated, but having lived through that period, it's like a time capsule. And though it's a comedy, what it attempts to make light of are some very serious issues. In addition to evoking that sense of isolation and anxiety we all experienced throughout 2020, it addresses mental health awareness, and also life in the early 21st century, learning to operate as nodes in a digital society (itself spurred on by the physical distancing we experienced during COVID).

Subjects broached include social justice (especially navigating that minefield as a conscientious yet privileged white guy), climate change ("you say the whole world's ending - honey, it already did"), Instagram culture ("is this heaven, or is it just a white woman's Instagram?"), video chatting ("I'll waste my time, Facetiming with my mom"), sexting ("it isn't sex, it's the next best thing"), generational shifts... all with a self-deferential humor that nevertheless does not erase the significant weight of these issues (the impact of which is visible as Bo's mental state deteriorates throughout the piece).

There isn't really any part of it that I don't like. And I enjoy how the whole thing is tied together by the concept of being trapped inside ("tryna be funny and stuck in a room") - for a period of time that just keeps dragging on longer and longer ("it'll stop any day now") - and trying to maintain your sanity while using the not-very-promising gift of being a comedian to try to address the collapse of modern civilization ("should I be joking at a time like this?"). It's not really rock music, but I consider it a rock opera (a comedy opera?).

Anyway, I've boiled it down to my top three favorite songs, that work best out of context of the rest of the piece, just to give you a taste of what it's about. Here they are (in the order they occur in the special):

How The World Works
Welcome To The Internet
That Funny Feeling

And, for the holiday*, here's an extra video - my favorite song from the Inside Outtakes (also worth watching):

The Chicken

*I know, it's the wrong type of poultry, but oh well...