I used to bond over The Chappelle Show with my older brother and when we saw him live in 2005 he was hilarious! I remember he was on stage for so long that some guy who flickers a flashlight from the side of the stage to let him know his time is up got visibly exhausted because Dave went on for well over 2 hours while he hopelessly just stood there doing some fucked up flashlight morris code once every 5 minutes.

Those were different times​. Chappelle was extremely relevant back then. With what was happening in the world he was almost essential to making sense of things. I feel like a hack for saying this, but he was "important comedy"

Now he's back and he's funny but he just doesn't feel relevant, or as funny... He used to seem like his motivations were rooted in a shared experience of a collective cultural tide shift. He was like a catalyst for breaking the cycle of generations of everyday racial prejudice (despite what he's said to the contrary). Today? There's nothing collective he's at the centre of. He's not saying anything new.

All that's happened here is he got $60 million for Netflix to press record as he put in no more effort than he would have otherwise. The only noteworthy thing is that instead of being able to see him on a cheap YouTube bootleg we see him in 5.1 1080p doing his act from a stage constructed from an ivory petasil. Oh and my older brother doesn't talk to me anymore, so there's that... Sometimes there's just no going back is all I'm saying.