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Under bright, neon blue lights, comedian Hasan Minhaj takes the stage in his new Netflix special, “Off With His Head,” to talk about money — or rather, economic stratification in the location of filming, the San Francisco Bay Area.
“Even when you’re rich in the Bay, you’re poor,” Minhaj jokes while pointing out audience members he believes are “Bay-rich.”
This is where Minhaj shines: under a spotlight, telling personal jokes to a relatable audience. That’s why a profile in the New Yorker last September — one questioning the veracity of many of the heart-wrenching personal accounts of discrimination and harassment he tells during his routines, which he has called “emotional truths” — threatened to derail his career. The backlash was swift and devastating; in an interview with Esquire, Minhaj revealed he was not selected to be the next host of “The Daily Show” because of the controversy.
But now, over a year after the profile’s publication, Minhaj is ready to be thrown back into the public eye. Early into the special, he pivots back into his familiar political commentary.
“Look at Congress,” Minhaj says. “It’s 535 members of Congress and they’re all old as fuck.” It’s nothing we haven’t heard from him before, but it’s not unfunny. He seems to reference the negative attention surrounding him as he continues, “Yeah, I am a capital-A ageist. Write about it. Substack it. Make it the headline.”
The main problem with “Off With His Head” — which is, again, not unfunny — is that Minhaj seems to be preoccupied with asking for forgiveness — from everyone. He chastises a younger version of himself for being an “insufferable person” when he corrected Ellen DeGeneres’s pronunciation of his name on The Ellen Show.
“My life is perfect, and I’m out here arguing with Ellen over vowels,” Minhaj says.
He’s allowed to change his mind, but it’s hard to look past his attempts to rehabilitate his image in the wake of the New Yorker exposé. He wants to be edgy and cautious simultaneously, comparing his penis to an “Israeli drone strike” immediately before remarking that “every issue in America” divides audiences now. It’s clear that Minhaj could benefit from the audacity that underlined his earlier work.
All this is not to say “Off With His Head” doesn’t have its brilliant moments. Some of Minhaj’s strongest material is deeply personal. He has a short spiel that articulates his experiences with masculinity and manhood in a way that separates him from most of his male comedian peers and is also very funny. He talks about being an immigrant from “Beige-istan,” an amalgamation of countries in the Middle East, South Asia, and Latin America. There’s a shockingly sincere bit about the “beige guilt” he feels about having roots in the colonial world while living in an American empire that actively subjugates his “home country.”
Of course, Minhaj could not be a progressive Muslim public figure in 2024 without mentioning Palestine. And he does — sort of. In a list of regions “the empire has been bombing the shit out of,” Minhaj mentions Gaza last, perhaps to underscore it. It’s a very brief bit, which is especially surprising from a man that once directly antagonized the Saudi government. For those who have been following Minhaj’s career for his keen political commentary, “Off With His Head” seems uncharacteristically lukewarm.
For a comeback special, “Off With His Head” is good. It’s not overly focused on directly addressing the controversy surrounding him, but it doesn’t ignore it either — he uses his hour-long time block to make amends. But this marks Minhaj’s third special, and it’s his least ambitious one yet. It seems like Minhaj is afraid to use his comedic charms, his politics, and his boldness, and we can only hope his next project reaches back into his comedic inventory.
