Review: Amy Schumer, “The Leather Special” on Netflix

Amy Schumer’s stand-up specials have jumped from Comedy Central — the network that showcased her rise from roasts to Inside Amy Schumer — to HBO and now Netflix.

Because how can Comedy Central compete with Netflix at this point? But that’s beside the point of this review.

Schumer calls her Netflix hour The Leather Special because she’s wearing all leather, which itself references comedians before her. As I wrote in my review of the hour for Decider:

Like other leather-wearing stand-ups before her – Eddie Murphy and Andrew “Dice” Clay – Schumer certainly has reached the height of her comedic powers.

And in honor of International Women’s Day, much of her success has derived from her own hard work. Creating, writing and starring in the Peabody-winning Comedy Central series, Inside Amy Schumer. Writing and starring in the box-office hit, Trainwreck. And now directing herself in The Leather Special, which arrives a year and a half after Chris Rock had directed her in an HBO comedy special at the Apollo.

Yes. Schumer remains very self-aware. As she jokes: “I don’t know if you know but this year I’ve gotten very rich, famous and humble.”

She’ll humble herself, thank you very much, whether it’s mocking her own leather ensemble as a trash bag more suited for a walk of shame, or chugging directly from a bottle of wine onstage and declaring she’ll black out before the night is over, or her relative lack of feminine hygiene, or how she feels when she catches a glimpse of herself on the giant monitors beside the stage beaming her image to the cheap seats. One word she wouldn’t use to describe herself, though: “Brave.”

And yet that’s how many mainstream and not-so-mainstream media described her topless Instagram shots, which Schumer talked about online at the time and in greater length here onstage.

There’s still a perplexing double standard when it comes to how Hollywood, the media and society in general treat women compared to men. Schumer related one such instance from her Trainwreck promotional tour, in which the interviewers asked her co-star Bill Hader about his favorite beers, while they asked Schumer to describe what it’s like to have sex with her. Not cool there. But she’ll certainly go there and more here in her comedy act.

In fact, The Leather Special is an aggressively sexual hour. No beating around the bush, so to speak, but rather, in your face.

Read my entire review of Amy Schumer: The Leather Special on Netflix, on Decider.com.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ux-x1GnUuqY&t=6s

Sean L. McCarthy

Editor and publisher since 2007, when he was named New York's Funniest Reporter. Former newspaper reporter at the New York Daily News, Boston Herald and smaller dailies and community papers across America. Loves comedy so much he founded this site.

View all posts by Sean L. McCarthy →

5 thoughts on “Review: Amy Schumer, “The Leather Special” on Netflix

  1. That isn’t a double-standard. Most of Schumer’s comedic shtick is about her sex life, so of course that’s what she was asked about.

Comments are closed.