At the beginning of his new Netflix crowd work special Lucid (named so because of its stated theme: dreams), Matt Rife claimed that the venue—The Comedy Zone in Charlotte, California—is one where he has been performing since he was 16. This is an odd brag. Usually, comedians performing at their ‘old haunts’ find subtler expressions for the same thing—inside jokes, hand gestures, rooting for a local sports team et cetera. But in Rife’s case, like a lot of his comedy, this remark was aimed not at the actual audience, but at hypothetical, off-stage critics. He wants to tell them, “I’m not just the TikTok guy!”

I am not sure Lucid will win him any new fans, though. Rife is definitely good at a couple of things—like identifying and riffing off naturally eccentric people (this is a quality epitomised by that one uncle who is always magically emceeing every family wedding). Here, he gets into a hilarious back-and-forth with a gentleman with comically high-toed cowboy boots. He is respectful yet naughty with a lady who sells blowjob tutorials for a living.

But Rife’s comedic instincts end there: he does not really understand how much, or for how long, to squeeze a specific angle. He also does not understand narrative cohesion, although that sort of thing is tougher to manage in a crowd work special. The entire second half of Lucid devolves into a kind of haphazard group therapy session about wet dreams. One heckler actually gets up and tries to hijack the show, pretty much, and Rife is unsure and gauche in his handling of the matter.

My advice? Skip it, and probably skip Rife altogether until he has some actual years of working on his craft under his belt—not just the ones he humble-brags about for effect.

Image: Mathieu Bitton/Netflix © 2023