Jerrod Carmichael’s new special ‘Don’t Be Gay’ is surprisingly hollow

Jerrod Carmichael’s 2022 stand-up special, Rothaniel, was a masterpiece. The hour-long show drew headlines because the comedian publicly came out as gay to the audience in an act of vulnerability, honesty and storytelling brilliance.

Last summer, Carmichael released a possibly too personal eight-part unscripted series called Jerrod Carmichael Reality Show that let viewers in on his infidelities, therapy sessions and love life. He’s followed that up with his latest stand-up special, Don’t Be Gay, where Charmichael reverts to his pre-Rothaniel self: a cynic who revels in discomfort at the expense of the vulnerability and communal feeling we got from him three years ago.

The first few minutes of a stand-up set often determine the tone and where the comedian wants to take the audience throughout the performance. I was surprised, then, that Charmichael’s set began with him using the r-word, an ableist slur//////, twice as a punchline. It was a surprising move for someone who, after Rothaniel, became one of the few comedians to push back on Dave Chappelle’s transphobic comedy, calling for something better from the megastar.

“Childish jokes aside, who the f— are you?” Charmichael said in a 2022 GQ interview. “It’s just kind of played. But he’s choosing to die on the hill. So, alright, let him.”

Carmichael has since backtracked from his comments about Chappelle, but his original stance, combined with the searing honesty of Rothaniel, seemed to indicate that he was planting his flag on the side of comedians who aren’t driven by how much they can offend audiences. For his part, Carmichael addressed criticisms of his use of the r-word: “I will say that you can be offended by art,” he told The Wrap. “That’s OK. I would hope that they’re able to breathe through it and still find something funny and still laugh.”

In a vacuum, this all speaks to the tension between comedians, artists and people who consume the art. But Carmichael isn’t just any comedian throwing his hat into the trite “cancel culture” debate. Instead, he used Rothaniel as a safe space. He needed the space to hold his feelings and worked through that hour to make the audience feel safe in their reactions and emotions. So it feels like a betrayal for that same person to flippantly create a space that’s unwelcoming to a whole swath of people impacted by ableist slurs.

Maybe it’s that switch that colored the rest of Don’t Be Gay for me. In his latest effort, the Charmichael we saw in Rothaniel has been replaced mostly with the Carmichael from the past: one who uses his own darkest thoughts and antagonistic persona to cocoon his audience in discomfort. But to what end? Don’t Be Gay is a continuation of the Jerrod Carmichael Reality Show in its self-flagellation. But there’s not much beyond that, including originality. Carmichael spends most of Don’t Be Gay poking fun at himself about his relationship insecurities — his lack of trust in the word “love,” his gaslighting, and his open relationship with his partner. We’ve been here before. We saw it in real time for a season of television.

Much of Don’t Be Gay feels like a vehicle for Carmichael to discuss the reactions to the fact that he almost exclusively dated white men in his reality show (note: he called the backlash “racism”). For Carmichael, this is yet another playground to dance around in the discomfort. He briefly mentions that he is sometimes attracted to Black men, landing a tepid joke before moving on. When Carmichael lingers on these moments, it feels like he’s also catering his jokes to wider — and whiter — audiences, and his set loses the intimate feel of Rothaniel. Those familial moments do come back, though, especially when Carmichael returns to the source of his anxieties: his upbringing. When he jokes about mothers being “crazy,” he’s not only talking about his strained relationship with his ultra-religious mother, but also tapping into a larger comical discussion about what society does to Black mothers. This feels like the earnest Carmichael that gave us something unique some years ago.

It’s in these moments that we get the most raw Carmichael, the one who isn’t performing meanness, the one who has found the most comedy in the most real. It’s a tease.

Rothaniel was so brilliant that it gave Carmichael time to work through his contradictions and complexities. So even if a stand-up special like Don’t Be Gay leaves some of us wanting, there’s grace for him to get to the point where he can be comfortable again. Until then, we’ll likely get short reminders of a moment in time when one of the sharpest minds in comedy allowed us in. That seems worth the wait.