In Netflix’s Something Special, Hannah Gadsby returns to shattering people’s expectations

“This is going to be a feel-good show. Because I believe I owe you one,” Australian comic Hannah Gadsby tells their enraptured audience in Something Special, their third Netflix comedy special. The reference is of course to Nanette (2018), Gadsby’s smash-hit debut comedy special that polarized viewers with its insistence on delving uncomfortably deep into the relationship between trauma and humor. In the time between Nanette and Something Special, Hannah Gadsby certainly developed a definition of comedy that didn’t risk humiliation at the altar of setup and punchlines. Rather, in their two specials, the comedian not only made room for undiluted rage but also ensured that its intensity left the audience shifting in their seats.

So when five years later, the comedian proclaims a more optimistic line of comedy, it feels at first, somewhat of an unchartered territory. Then again, it’s not as if Gadsby hadn’t already given the audience a heads-up. In 2018, the frenzied overnight success of Nanette derailed the comedian’s plan to quit comedy as they had claimed in the special. In Douglas (2022), Gadsby told the audience point-blank that they’re “fresh out of trauma,” constructing the special as a cheeky counter to the complaints that a large section of the audience harbored against Nanette (and art history). That Gadsby’s comedy would resemble a clean slate in their third special seems like the point then. Something Special looks, sounds, and feels nothing like Nanette and Douglas and yet that proves to be Gadsby’s calling card — simply because it isn’t just a case of the comedian’s growth. Instead, it makes a case for the comedian’s regrowth.

If Nanette, a show that tracked Gadsby’s journey as a queer person, egged on the audience to question the power dynamics of a laugh, then in Something Special, it’s as if Gadsby reclaims the power of laughter itself. After all, what is a laugh if not a perspective shift? In here, the comedian traverses a range of topics, opening with their marriage to their producer Jenny Shamash and expanding on the life that the couple have had together in the last few years. Still, even as Gadsby takes a detour to discuss the awkwardly hilarious meeting between Jenny and their family or how inherently unprepared they feel around fame, it’s clear that the special is about one thing: queer joy. In it, Gadsby offers a perspective shift — painting an imagery of romantic love, a wedding, and fame from the point of view of someone who was always made to feel that those things were out of their reach. The material in itself subverts the expectation of a comedy special helmed by a queer comedian — the anger makes way for peace.

The comedian’s opening slant against weddings precisely underlines that thought. While planning their own wedding, Gadsby realized that straight people have a lot of feelings about weddings, a stark contrast to their own indifference to the idea. The implication that Gadsby didn’t spend any time fantasizing about the intricacies of a wedding because they never thought they could access that right as a queer person, is right there. That the comedian not only got to have a wedding but also enjoy the process of getting married to someone they love, feels like a reclamation that is signature Gadsby. Even Gadsby’s bit about fame is steeped in the kind of vulnerability that they have consistently insisted on displaying on stage. The comedian wishes that they had more of the social wherewithal to handle fame in a way that didn’t feel like a coping mechanism. Here too, we get to see a perspective of stardom from someone who feels like they have got on the bus by accident. Constructing the entire special as a sort of a love-letter to their partner is another way Gadsby goes beyond the norm. By that I mean this isn’t just another special with a power imbalance between who tells a joke and who becomes the punchline. Rather, Gadsby mentions Jenny time and again in the special only to acknowledge her contribution to the material — as producer, she is as much a part of the collaboration that turns a set of jokes into an hour. The lines between creator and muse blur in ways that feel quietly revolutionary.

Gadsby continues their thematic preoccupations with laying bare their life’s foundational moments on stage and inviting the audience to look at it directly without feeling the need to turn it into a senseless gag. That’s not to say that the comedian doesn’t construct jokes out of their ill-fated meeting with Richard Curtis during which she announced their distaste for romantic comedies or draw laughs for their exaggerated impressions of their pedantic mother. Just that, the jokes become both the medium and the message. Irrespective of perspective shifts, Nanette continues to be an impossible special to live up to — if anything, Gadsby seems to understand that, choosing to instead start afresh. The result is Something Special, an hour that frequently lacks bite but isn’t one that ever settles on past laurels.

Poulomi Das is a film and culture writer, critic, and programmer. Follow more of her writing on Twitter.

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