TV Review: Bill Burr Isn't On Your Side In Hulu's New "Hularious" Standup Comedy Special "Drop Dead Years"

Comedian Bill Burr (Old Dads) is the star of Hulu’s latest “Hularious" standup comedy special Drop Dead Years, and Laughing Place was provided with an advance screener for review. Below are my thoughts.

As a fan of Bill Burr’s from his previous standup work and from his acting career, last summer I convinced my wife to go with me to see his headlining show at the Hollywood Bowl during the Netflix Is a Joke comedy festival right here in Los Angeles. It was a great show (made even more memorable by the use of Yondr bags at the venue, forcing everyone in the 17,500-seat Bowl to actually focus on the the guy telling jokes on stage instead of on their phones), and now Burr has put much of that same material (recorded at the Moore Theater in Seattle a couple months later) into Drop Dead Years for those who didn’t get to see him on tour in 2024. The title of the special is, of course, a reference to the period in a man’s life– and he makes clear this does usually only apply to men– where one might keel over and drop dead at any time.

By and large the comedian isn’t using that reality as an excuse to be morbid, although he does reflect on a recent period of melancholy as being the first time he was ever emotionally honest with his wife. Instead Bill Burr wants us to know that the sight of other friends his age passing away has caused him to change for the better– but not too much, as he still retains the acidic temperament and general distaste for pretty much everything that makes him so darn funny as a standup. But he has made an effort to become more agreeable with his wife, he claims, and that leads to an extended bit about the effect that decision has had on his marriage. Burr also insists that he avoids exposure to current events as much as possible, putting up a front of noninvolvement in world affairs and also claiming to hate both liberals and conservatives at either end of the political spectrum.

That’s the kind of fence-sitting and equal-opportunity-offense usually reserved for South Park, but hey, I’m a fan of that show too, and Bill’s similarly keen ability to make fun of everyone on every side speaks to me for the same reasons. Back at the Bowl last summer, when the show ended my wife confided in me that she suspects the comic to privately be fairly progressive, but I have a feeling that the folks on the Right feel the opposite way when they see him perform. And maybe that’s his secret– in outwardly mocking just about everybody, he actually manages to speak to all of us instead. Other line-riding topics tackled include your pony-tail sporting, motorcycle-riding uncle who secretly wishes he had a family, the sadness of Guitar Center, the way we treat those with dementia, why the Ku Klux Klan still exists, and overly patriotic guys who put flags on the backs of their trucks.

I particularly enjoyed a bit about how the shooting range is not sufficient enough training to learn how to handle a gun, and that outside-the-box viewpoint is a perfect encapsulation of what Bill Burr does best. He’s capable of taking dearly held beliefs from a wide variety of perspectives and turning them on their head, never once aligning himself with a commonly held position. He also presents himself as a guy who just wants to be left alone, but at the outset of this special he admits that he got into standup comedy because it was a way for him to be liked and appreciated by groups of strangers. There’s an inherent contradiction there, but I’d say that only adds to his everyman appeal. Besides, Burr is the first person who would (and does, in this special) call himself a hypocrite. He’s perfected the balancing act of “saying what we’re all thinking" while simultaneously taking his own audience members down a few pegs, regardless of what their opinions are.

Bill Burr: Drop Dead Years is available to stream right now, exclusively via Hulu.