- Network: Netflix
- Series Premiere Date: May 30, 2022
Critic Reviews
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Beyond being a technically magnificent set, Nothing Special is a deeply profound and humane hour of comedy.
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What follows is 54 minutes of fresh, funny, bittersweet, provocative and uniquely Norm comedy, performed while Macdonald is seated in a Zoom-type setup in his home, armed with a microphone, over-the-ear headphones and his unique brand of observational humor.
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Macdonald managed to be somehow timeless, outdated, and very much of his time, all at the same time.
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The hour is very funny at times, and also far less polished than it would have been had Macdonald gotten the chance to fully work it out in front of audiences and then tape it in a proper venue. But the unusual format gives us a glimpse into both his process as a comedian and the state of his mind toward the end of his life.
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Some of the material is a little unpolished, but it allows a range of topics that Macdonald makes equally appropriate for his folksy style: potentially cornball material about airplanes and doctors, swirled into darker, more morbid thoughts about plane crashes and hospital life support.
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On one side, there’s the heaviness of Macdonald’s death and his memory. On the other side is the special itself, which is not quite ephemeral, but it’s close. It’s thin. Some portions are striking and fun, some feel like incomplete approaches to an idea that’s not fully there yet, some are simply overworn premises without enough oomph to distinguish them. ... The indistinctness of Nothing Special does create an opportunity to remember him. Like the comedians gathered at the end, it’s an invitation.