Torching 2024: A Roast of the Year

This was so awful I created an account just to review it.

Roasts with Jeff Ross are usually amazing, but this was an absolute trainwreck. An hour of awkward, corny, unfunny garbage. I cannot imagine who saw the planned material and greenlit this disaster of a show.

The jokes are all horrible, the impersonators (Biden, P Diddy, etc) were the worst I've ever seen. And just to be sure, they threw in a bunch of jokes with slurs that were completely unnecessary.

It's also full of bizarre D-list celeb sightings including John Stamos, Diplo, and... every comedian that was featured on this sad show.

This Jeffrey Ross joke sums up Torching 2024: "Quincy Jones died this year. His middle name was Delight. That is also what he saw before he died." That's a joke an 8 year old would be proud of telling.

A room full of comedy writers decided something that stale was suitable for a Netflix special. Another comment said this show had 25 writers. It must've been 25 monkeys at 25 typewriters, except they didn't write Shakespeare; they wrote... this.

A few comedians fell back on their own stage material, so there were a few half-hearted laughs there, but most of the 2024 related "comedy" was dire. Shallow, cheap, and obvious dad jokes that people make while watching the news and quickly forget. The comedians should've worked this material over into their own voices, because it needed a second or third pass. The impressions of Diddy, Biden, and UHC CEO were a thing that happened, but again, it's all so corny that even Jimmy Fallon wouldn't pretend to laugh at it.

The one time I genuinely laughed is when a comedian called this the "Temu Tom Brady Roast." That level of self-awareness is commendable. The Tom Brady Roast brought roasts back to life in 2024, and Torching 2024 killed them. I wonder if this show saw Delight before it died?

Nope, still not funny.

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.

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.