Bo Burnham: An Extensive Inside Review

WIMITLA. Album Review

By Alix Sholomon and Elie Weitzman

Five years. We’ve waited five years to hear the piano play a cheerful tune, see the colorful lights go wild and think about a piece of clever, yet borderline depressing commentary from our Bo. Yes, we got Eighth Grade and Promising Young Woman, but there’s something about Bo Burnham’s solo career that separates it from every other piece of media we see him in. “Bo Burnham: Inside” is a year-long exploration into the psyche of a man who we once thought had behind that side of himself for good after 2016’s “Make Happy.” But in an extremely self-aware nod to his past work, the comedian opened himself up for dissection once again, filming a special that went beyond performance: it became his life. 

Enjoying Burnham’s comedy requires at least a basic understanding of the world around you and a cynical lens on life. He hits all the normal points: he makes fun of white men, then white women, then gamers, then people on Twitter, and so on and so forth. However, doing that doesn’t separate him from any other comedian. It’s what he does next that makes him special. While most comedians operating within the observational genre of comedy will make fun of something and then move on, Burnham becomes introspective, examining his own desires to appear intelligent or funny and how that influences his behavior, especially while performing. At the end of every bit, regardless of who the target is or how he manages to make fun of them, the joke is always on him. It’s an extra layer of self-awareness that was present and has only become more prevalent even since the earliest days of his comedy career on YouTube and allows him to deliver social and political commentary that most other comedians are incapable of performing. No example from “Inside” exemplifies this more than a stand-up interlude early on in the show where he goes on to heckle people for over-saturating the Internet with their every opinion, simply telling them to “Shut the [redacted] up.” He then punches right back at himself, following up that extremely aggressive statement with a sheepish confession that he currently is not doing what he requested of his audience. 

In one of his most poignant and symbolic bits towards the beginning of the special, Bo sings a song about the world, inviting his friend Socko, a sock puppet attached to his left hand, to sing with him in true children’s show fashion. However, while Bo sings about the beautiful parts of life, Socko begins ranting about the harmful effects of contemporary neoliberal capitalism and its effects on the psyche of the worker and their relations to the means of production, as well as many other critiques of the global economy and society as a whole. In essence, he says some not-as-fun stuff. Bo begins to become uncomfortable, threatening to remove Socko from his arm, thus removing his voice and sentience. Socko reluctantly learns his lesson the hard way, and Bo goes on singing, eventually ripping Socko off in a brutal murder. The irony of this all is its symbolic relevance: Bo is meant to be a streaming service or media channel like Netflix (the same streaming service that published this very special), and Socko is the writers or actors or anyone creative on the show. As Socko begins to use his platform (a.k.a. Bo’s voice) to speak out, his free will is revoked and he is forced to become a cog in the very set of gears he aimed to criticize. Just as Netflix, a massive multimedia conglomerate, often cancels shows on a whim for reasons often “unknown” (ie. Hasan Minhaj’s Patriot Act, which was cancelled mysteriously after the comedian spoke out about Netflix’s tax avoidances), Bo makes Socko an arm (literally) of the agenda he hopes to push by threatening him when he deviates from the norm, essentially making Socko an extension of his voice. It’s a biting and brave criticism of the hand that feeds him, but in true Bo fashion, he doesn’t care. And that’s what we love about him. 

Although we could probably write a page-and-a-half worth of analysis for each song in this special, we find it to be a much better use of our time to examine one of our favorite parts: something we deem “the turning point.” No, it’s not the intermission. However, the way in which Bo separated the special was very thought provoking as well. What we know as the first act of the show was much lighter and upbeat, although masqueraded by pretty lights, cool effects, and catchy tunes, than what we saw later on. The intermission served as a palette cleanser of what was to come for the rest of the show as Bo wiped the lens of the camera, or as some may interpret it, the glass of our screens, perhaps to clean it in preparation. That being said, the real divide in the show comes with the song “Turning 30,” where Bo celebrates his birthday alone in the room he has been trapped in for 6 months. It has a very monotonous and eerie undertone to it, heavily juxtaposing the cheeriness we felt from him when he started filming. This song serves as one of many chronological check ins that remind us of Bo’s deteriorating mental state throughout the show. 

For years both of us have thought that Bo has a way of performing comedy so masterfully choreographed that it doesn’t even feel like stand up anymore, which he has even acknowledged. This special takes Bo’s unique style to a whole new level as he delves into the medium of film in the absence of live performance during the pandemic, which feels like he’s exploring a different side to himself, yet also going back to his roots in YouTube where he first became popular. “Inside” feels impersonal at times, something Bo himself points out as he faces the camera in a mirror so that we, the audience, can see who he’s really talking to. As he slowly zooms into the camera lens, he says “feeling you here with me,” in what was a somewhat sardonic attempt to poke fun at our loneliness together, and the impersonal format of what would otherwise be a sold out live stand-up show. And yet, this is one of the most personal things shared to any medium, let alone Netflix. It’s so obvious that Bo bears his entire soul and body to this performance, placing himself in a very vulnerable position the entire time, so susceptible to scrutiny, but unwilling to submit to it. In previous specials like “Make Happy” or “What,” we got to see the gears turning in the clock that makes up Bo’s brain. In this, not only do we see them as they turn, but also when they stop churning and require fixing, as Bo often keeps the outtakes in which he frustratedly slams the boom mic or yells at himself. The lack of editing creates a “fly on the wall” feeling during these moments that feel more like we are members of the Party in 1984 than witnesses to a comedy performance. 

Bo seemingly ages years during the filming of this special. The emotional and physical toll of devoting his every waking moment to a project he desperately hoped he would not finish is visible when comparing the look in his eyes on the first and last days of shooting. It’s important to note that he used the first take he shot for his last song in the final cut of the special, where he looks so eager and full of life. For the entire year of filming this special, he didn’t shave at all, giving a physical representation to the emergence of a more animalistic rageful version of himself that was cultivated in his isolation. At one point, he watches an old clip of himself from the start of his career — a time that feels like eons ago. At the same time, as his current self inserts clips from the filming of the special in 2020, it feels like that time difference is the same. In a way, it is: Bo underwent what many would call an unprecedented amount of mental and emotional transformations during that year where many of us felt alone, but did not document it to this extent. He was very open to the fact that this time was very hard for him, assuring the audience that he would not kill himself, with us both muttering the words, “I do not believe you.” As audience members, we felt so worried for him, yet we felt his pain. Through all of this though, he delivers a moving message that the perceived endlessness of depression and isolation are nothing compared to the literal eternity of death. 

It's been highly speculated that Bo will never come back to comedy, just as it has been for the past five years. Fans were aware that he was struggling on stage, as they watched him have constant panic attacks and a deteriorating mental health. Yet, after watching “Inside,” we truly saw what pushed him away. Unlike John Mulaney who needs comedy to survive and stay clean, Bo is slowly being killed by it and is giving us backstage passes. Whether or not he will ever come back after this is uncertain, but unlikely. However, there was a certain finality to the conclusion to this special, calling back to the set of “Make Happy,” suggesting that we have just watched the end of his comedy career. As he watches himself projecting in the final shot, reminiscent of “The Truman Show,” he gives one last satisfied smirk and the screen goes black. Though it’s unclear what that smile truly meant, we’d like to think it represents his satisfaction at his decision to let a piece of himself go. And for that, we cannot be angry. We must respect his decision as someone who has given us so much and asked for so little. 10/10