'Beside Himself' Isn't Peak Jeff Dunham

I’m a big fan of Jeff Dunham.  He’s one of my all-time favorite standup acts.  Thus, I was really looking forward to watching his new Netflix special, Beside Himself.  However, after finally getting to watch it, well, let’s just say I’ve seen him do better.

Heck, here’s the thing: not only do I think Jeff’s a phenomenal ventriloquist, but I also deem him a comedy genius.  And thus, I know he can significantly be more clever, hilarious, and dynamic with his material and execution.  Beside Himself is already his ninth special, and I believe that every single one of his eight previous specials is superior to it.

Maybe it’s because he’s now less willing to push the envelope in a world that’s getting more and more politically correct.  He still gets somewhat edgy in this special, but there isn’t as much bite to the humor as before.  In addition, it has no distinctive moments that I feel I would be able to remember for a long time.  In fact, there are a couple of bits here that felt like retreads of past bits, which had had better forms and deliveries.  There’s also this recurring joke about one of Jeff’s twin sons doing something to their dog, which is a bit of a mixed bag.

That being said, I still find Beside Himself to be fresh and enjoyable.  It could probably be the biased fan in me talking, but seriously, if you’re a Jeff Dunham fan, it’s impossible to not have a good time with it at the very least.  And I think that even though it’s not on par with Jeff’s best performances, it’s still worthwhile and funny.  It still got to make me laugh a lot.

As usual, Jeff’s “Big Four” – Walter, Bubba J, Peanut, and Achmed – have their respective sets here.  And they generally turn out exactly as how I thought they would be.  The highlight for long-time fans is probably José Jalapeño on a Stick showing up once again during the Peanut set – his first appearance since Minding the Monsters.

Jeff also attempts to shake things up by debuting a new dummy – Larry, the jittery, chain-smoking, stressed-out personal adviser to President Donald Trump.  Through him, he’s able to make jabs at Trump in a moderate, all-in-good-fun way – in a partly cringey, partly successful attempt to please both anti- and pro-Trump people.  But the exclamation point that Jeff does with Larry is throwing shade at celebrities who believe themselves to be smarter than they really are and would go out obnoxiously lecturing the rest of the country/world.

Introducing a new character is cool and all, but I wish Jeff did something more memorably unique with this special.  Like, how cool it would have been if Jeff did something similarly epic as his infomercial bit with Little Jeff in Unhinged in Hollywood or Achmed the Dead Terrorist disguising himself as “Jacque Merde the French Terrorist” in order to screw with censors in All Over the Map.  For example, I can’t remember him ever operating two of the Big Four at the same time.  Doing such a thing here for the first time would have given this special the same iconic moment as those aforementioned.

In the end, I had fun with Jeff Dunham: Beside Himself.  This may be Jeff’s weakest special so far, but it’s still pretty hilarious.  In fact, it’s much better than the best work of many standup comics.