The long, and agonizing to witness, fall of Bill Burr has entered new depths.
The transformation reminds me of another once lethal comedian who became unfunny in his life’s third act.
George Carlin grew into a bitter, cynical, and nihilistic comic. It was a serious falloff from his humor in the 70’s and 80’s, which I admit still wasn’t for everyone.
I remember watching Carlin’s early specials replayed on HBO as a kid. His facial expressions, verbal cues, sound effects, oddities and writing were brilliant, and genuinely made me laugh.
I even recall where I was the day I learned he had died, June 22, 2008. Sitting in a local bar & grill with my aunt eating chicken wings. How many comedians can you say you recall such details about? For me, the only other one is Norm Macdonald’s passing.
Carlin allowed his growing cynicism to infect his act, that may be understating what has gone on with Bill Burr.
To be clear, this isn’t coming from someone who has never appreciated Burr’s work. I saw him live in a mid-sized theater about a decade ago. He did an hour and a half and it was fine, but still much softer than his specials from a decade prior to that, and he seemed to be sorting his way through the material as he went.
This was a man who once did a bit on stage about domestic violence. “They say every time after it happens, how there’s no reason to hit a woman. Now, I’m not saying you should ever do it. But no reason? There’s no reason??” It was darkly hilarious and acted out with passion and charm.
Contrast that with Bill Burr Presents: Friends Who Kill, the Netflix showcase where he MC’s and just shits on “Karens”, and by that he simply means white women. I got enough of a sense of what it was from Gavin McInnes and Anthony Cumia covering it rather than having to subject myself to the full experience. That was June of 2022. This collapse has been an ongoing thing, when was the turn? Covid seems to be the underlying inflection point. Yet, Burr is not simply a Covidiot.
A review of his 2025 Hulu special Drop Dead Years called him a therapeutic work in progress, figuring himself out in public. That was meant as a compliment. Burr agrees with the premise — he told Variety the special was the result of reevaluating his own past work, and described himself as a recovering meathead doing the best he can. So it wasn’t just the theater tour. He’s working material out in the specials too, on the eighth hour-long feature of his career, at 56 years old.
In September 2025 he went to the Riyadh Comedy Festival , which is the funniest thing I’ve seen him do in quite some time. Not that I have any issue with people taking Saudi money, I think it’s more admirable than taking Hollywood’s, but because it infuriated the very people he has been aligning himself with for roughly a decade. Top acts were reportedly paid as much as $1.6 million, according to Tim Dillon. Burr trying to reconcile his remaining fans’ anger with his willingness to forgo his new allegiances for a payday was fun to witness.
He’s always played up the angry red-head comic, but now he’s far less coherent. He recently exhibited an inability to formulate even a basic question when interviewing The Strokes frontman Julian Casablancas on his podcast. Casablancas is no Captain Charisma himself these days, but the interview only got back on track when the singer began asking Burr questions about himself. Burr’s mind literally seems to have ceased its most basic functions in favor of distilling everything through his own self-loathing narcissistic impulses, at least from what can be gleaned on the surface. It’s a sure fire recipe for getting your wires crossed.
He also feels he can write off all criticism of his comedy as racist because he is in an interracial marriage. Which is, of course, preposterous. His comedy doesn’t fail to make me laugh because of who his wife is. It’s his constant mental gymnastics that seek to position himself as the counter-cultural voice of reason that fail to make him relatable to the people who once appreciated him. This negative feedback loop creates further cognitive dissonance that struggles to process how he became the one being labeled out-of-touch.
Bill Burr was never a comedic genius that rivaled the all-time greats. But he was funny. That’s no longer the case. Comedy comes from honesty, and when you can’t be honest about the world, you can’t satirize, mock, or lampoon its inconsistencies in a genuine way.
George Carlin stopped being funny and started being a very well paid doomer, more interested in showing the audience how smart he was for figuring the grand mysteries of the universe out on his own. Bill Burr has descended beyond that. The cringy content he is putting out today does however make for its own form of entertainment.
You won’t be seeing me at any of his shows in the future, but we’ll always have the Red Sox.
