Matt Rife’s Netflix Crowd Work Special ‘Lucid’ Is a Snooze-Worthy Take on Dreams: TV Review
variety.comAlison Herman TV Critic “Next time you see some haters in my comments saying, ‘All he does is crowd work, it’s so easy’ — is it?!” the comedian Matt Rife asks his audience.
The 28-year-old social media star has clearly retained the defensiveness that marked so much of “Natural Selection,” his debut Netflix hour from last fall best remembered for an effectively rage-baiting, if groanworthy, bit about domestic violence.
But in “Lucid,” his latest hours, Rife’s typical hobbyhorses — dick jokes, mostly, plus the aforementioned chip on his shoulder — are refracted through his audience, a few hundred fans gathered at the Comedy Zone in Charlotte, North Carolina for what Rife proudly and repeatedly stresses is Netflix’s first all-crowd work special.
Rife is not the first stand-up to source an entire act from spontaneous reactions to his own paying audience. (A decade ago, Todd Barry conducted an entire tour with no prepared bits, synthesizing the shows into a special directed by Lance Bangs.) It’s likely the phantom haters Rife is so irked by are responding less to his time-honored means of forging a connection with the crowd than the impression that Rife is more influencer than observational master, using TikTok as a shortcut to the upper echelons of his field.
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