“Is it true that some people who say, ‘All he does is crowd work, it’s so easy,’ in my comments?,” asks comedian Matt Rife of his audience. The 28-year-old social media celebrity is still obviously defensive, as demonstrated by a large portion of his first Netflix hour from last fall, which was most known for an effective, albeit cringe-inducing, segment about domestic abuse. However, in “Lucid,” his most recent appearance, Rife’s usual pastimes—mostly dumb jokes and the previously mentioned chip on his shoulder—are reflected back to his audience, a few hundred people gathered at Charlotte, North Carolina’s Comedy Zone for what Rife repeatedly and proudly claims is Netflix’s first all-crowd work special at Matt Rife’s Netflix Crowd Work Special “Lucid” Is a Snooze-Worthy Take on Dreams: TV Review.
Rife is not the first stand-up to source an entire act from spontaneous reactions to his own paying audience. (A decade ago, Todd Barry conducted an entire tour with no prepared bits, synthesizing the shows into a special directed by Lance Bangs.) It’s likely the phantom haters Rife is so irked by are responding less to his time-honored means of forging a connection with the crowd than the impression that Rife is more influencer than observational master, using TikTok as a shortcut to the upper echelons of his field. With his full lips and square jaw, Rife certainly looks the part at Matt Rife’s Netflix Crowd Work Special ‘Lucid’ Is a Snooze-Worthy Take on Dreams: TV Review.
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To that end, Rife is careful to emphasize that he’s been performing at the Comedy Zone since he was a teenager, even though his mainstream success is relatively recent. Whatever one thinks of his Gen-Z bro schtick, “Lucid” — directed by frequent collaborator Erik Griffin — showcases Rife as a seasoned MC. He knows how long to dwell on an interesting response without wringing it dry (a woman who runs a business selling blow job tutorials), and how to pivot away from an obvious dead end (a disjointed ramble about being single). Besides, incorporating other points of view helps temper the exhaustion that comes with Rife pantomiming a high-octane sex toy. He’s more palatable as a garnish than the main course at Matt Rife’s Netflix Crowd Work Special ‘Lucid’ Is a Snooze-Worthy Take on Dreams: TV Review.
“Lucid” is, in practice, not as spontaneous as its premise implies. Though Rife opens with an expected bit of outfit-based roasting — a gentleman with a ridiculous pair of bedazzled, curly-toed boots is “dressed like Santa’s favorite elf” — most of the hour is a guided conversation on the subject of dreams. The first half is about dreams in the aspirational sense: a woman who’s left a career in marketing to become a pilot; a gay man who knows what his stripper name would be if he were a woman. (Brandy Jameson. Pretty good!) The second, weaker half is about more literal dreams. Rife has a recurring nightmare about his teeth falling out; one audience member keeps getting chased by a faceless witch at Matt Rife’s Netflix Crowd Work Special ‘Lucid’ Is a Snooze-Worthy Take on Dreams: TV Review.
Though he’s a competent facilitator, Rife never generates the electricity of true, transcendent spontaneity. The framing itself is fairly trite. Rife introduces his subject by acknowledging he’s lucky to get to live his own dream, so he wants to know about others’ — but by the end, it’s become a setup for more juvenile sex stories. (Naturally, the nightmare chat is followed by a survey on wet dreams.) at Matt Rife’s Netflix Crowd Work Special ‘Lucid’ Is a Snooze-Worthy Take on Dreams: TV Review
In the last few years, Netflix has undertaken the same pivot with comedy as scripted programming, shifting focus from prestige or at least diversity to pure populist plays. (Critics certainly aren’t the intended audience anymore; no advance screeners of “Lucid” were made available for review.) The onetime home of Maria Bamford’s wacky, ingenious “Lady Dynamite” now partners with the likes of Rife, Joe Rogan and Shane Gillis: plainspoken men who are sometimes controversial in an exhausting, culture war sort of way, but mostly offer low-effort laughs. “Lucid” is just the latest stage of a broader game plan at Matt Rife’s Netflix Crowd Work Special ‘Lucid’ Is a Snooze-Worthy Take on Dreams: TV Review.
“Matt Rife: Lucid” is now streaming on Netflix at Matt Rife’s Netflix Crowd Work Special ‘Lucid’ Is a Snooze-Worthy Take on Dreams: TV Review.