During a lockdown period in the summer of 2020, Norm Macdonald knew he was dying of cancer, which would end his life the following year. But he told almost no one about his plight, and other comics were stunned when he passed. Just before going into the hospital for a procedure, he worried that he might not be able ever to perform again, so he recorded one last 50-minute routine in his living room, seated at his computer. What amounts to his farewell Zoom call also constitutes his final Netflix star turn, Norm Macdonald: Nothing Special.
The act (followed by a half-hour of roundtable discussion featuring Macdonald’s pals David Letterman, Dave Chappelle, Molly Shannon, Conan O’Brien, Adam Sandler, and David Spade) is triply eerie: the stifling combination of the lockdown, terminal illness, and the raw format, which captures Norm via only two stationary cameras, tends to minimize mirth. Norm does not look strong (he says he is hiding his white hair under a baseball cap), the special is uneven, and some of the jokes don’t work. Others are killer, such as a climactic bit about his mother that’s so digressive it’s a successor to his famous moth joke.
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