Daniel D'Addario Chief TV CriticIn his new comedy special on Netflix, Ricky Gervais mocks “the new women […] with beards and cocks”; he urges trans women to “lose the cock” towards the end of a long tirade about trans people’s anatomy.
It’d be easy to call this shocking. But after a moment of thought, there seems little startling at all about a comedian trying to score points off of a marginalized group of people, or a streaming service desperately trying to prove its bona fides as being all things to any potential viewership.
Gervais’ schtick is as predictable as it gets — and serves as further proof to an audience that Netflix has approached with simpering, condescending appeals that the streamer is not on anyone’s side but its own.
This special, entitled “SuperNature,” represents a collision between two malign forces. Gervais, since the end of his British comedy series “The Office,” has lived his life in public as an escalating series of bids for attention, often mistaking a substantial portion of the audience’s boredom with his routine as a sign that he was shocking the right people.
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