Torching 2024: A Roast of the Year

Roast of the year?? More boring than a documentary on the life of a rock. I can't believe people get paid to put this kind of material out. Boring, boring, boring ... the comedians were laughing at their own jokes to cue the crowd to laugh. None of these people would have made it past the first 5 seconds on the gong show. I was only able to make it through half of this waste of airtime and that was only because I was too busy doing something else that I couldn't get to my remote to switch it off. Try again next year Netflix and this time you might try to get some actual real talent and perhaps quit trying to pander to a certain crowd and create something that is at least mildly funny.

This roast was trash. The typical Comedy Central roasts are usually hilarious, so naturally I see the roast master Jeff Ross, and assume it would be more of the same. This was a disappointment. I don't think I laughed once. No one was fluid/natural and it felt like it was a rushed, forced, thrown together money grab. Absolute garbage. And I'm all for up and comers in the comedic game, but these people were not funny. I get the impression Netflix curated their jokes because if this is their best, YIKES. I'm hoping the cast is better than this on their own, because this was not it. Zero out of the ten, do not waste your time.

That's right, this is bad enough for me to write a review. This "special" has more than 25 comedy writers on staff. That works out to about two minutes of comedy per writer, yet the lack of humor is staggering. I have to say I usually enjoy the comedy of many of the people associated with this roast - Tim Dillon, Mark Normand, Sam Morrill and Ms. Pat to name a few, but like so many things produced today, seemed to be thrown together haphazardly. I don't know if this will change anybody's mind or stop them from watching (after all if you're bored and this is on Netflix you're not gonna really care about my two cents). However should this appear on another platform one day and you have to decide whether a). This is worth your time or b). Look somewhere else? I can tell you is this is an hour of your life you'll never get back again so spend it watching or doing something worthwhile.

I was ready to check out after the first 6 minutes but I felt it wouldn't be fair to write a negative review without finishing the show and giving the other comedians a chance. By the end I'm still holding this against Netflix though and probably Jeff Ross. The rest seem to be able to carry specials on their own so I'd like to hope they didn't write these jokes themselves. I find it hard to believe that the audience was laughing as hard as they seemed to at some of them. I'm pretty sure they took those clips from the two jokes out of the entire episode that were actually funny. The Biden impersonator was... interesting. Given the special's overall lameness I was bracing for another Trump so it was a fresh breeze amidst the comedy swamps of Dagobah. Featuring coked out John Stamos on drums trying a little bit harder to not appear coked out. Oh and to that 8/10 reviewer - please stop using ChatGPT to write your reviews, it's ruining the platform.

I absolutely LOVE Sam Morrill and Tim Dillon, as well as Mark Normand but my god, their material sounds like it was from the staff writers of At Midnight. But for as lame as most of their stuff was, it never comes close to how pedestrian Jeff Ross consistently is. I used to love his stand up but anyone who loves comedy can guess his punchlines before he delivers them. Worst of all is his new gimmick of pretending that he has a joke so offensive that he shouldn't even do it. Then he does the joke (a Menendez Brothers joke) and it was truly awful. Not offensive or edgy. It was just dull and silly. Spare yourself the time waster on this and watch Hinchcliffe and Nikki Glaser on the Brady Roast.