FEBRUARY 1, 2016
I have had an interesting personal relationship with Chelsea Handler.
Full disclosure: I was brought in to become the network censor for her late-night talk show, “Chelsea Lately,” from early 2008 to its finale in August 2014. Much as I admired her comedy, I have to confess Chelsea is not the easiest person with whom to deal. Early in my tenure, I would get daily phone calls from her complaining about my Standards & Practices notes, and I got the impression that she was not a person used to being told “no.” (It was particularly difficult because she was dating the president of the network, my boss, at the time, but that’s a story for another day.) But after enough times of having my notes backed up by the network, Chelsea and I came to a detente and even a grudging respect (I think).
Sidebar: If you ever want to get a glimpse of the relationship between Chelsea and me, wander into a bookstore (if your community still has one) and find her best-seller “Lies That Chelsea Handler Told Me.” I am the entirety of Chapter 12, with my notes to her published verbatim. PS: My notes are brilliant.
Back to Chelsea. Shortly after “Chelsea Lately,” ended, she announced that she would be doing several documentary specials and a series talk-show for Netflix starting in 2016, feeling that she had more to offer than joking about Justin Bieber every night. I totally got that, but for whatever reason, her deal with Netflix would only bring her back to TV 18 months later which in TV terms is a lifetime. In her absence, the smart-mouthed blonde comedian lane was quickly taken up by Amy Schumer, so I was skeptical whether she could come back from so long with the same level of success. I’m happy to say that with her new series of Netflix documentary specials, “Chelsea Does,” she has returned to semi-relevancy.
This is not to say that each of the four docs that Netflix premiered last week are of the same level of quality. The first two, though interesting in spots, are pretty lightweight.
“Chelsea Does Marriage” takes on a subject that the comic often discussed on “Chelsea Lately” and is evidently still on her mind. The section is at times a bit trivial (do we really need another visit to the Elvis impersonator chapel in Las Vegas?) and a little self-absorbed (numerous conversations with married friends as well as her psychologist). But when she stops to listen to her subjects (a gay male married couple, a BDSM threesome in a polyamorous relationship, the founder of cheating website Ashley Madison), the film picks up and becomes genuinely enlightening (at times).
“Chelsea Does Silicon Valley” is probably the most disposable of the four docs. One of the running jokes on “Chelsea Lately” was her inability to understand anything technological, from her iPhone on up, so she takes her crew to California’s top tech centers to get some help. It’s basically a one-joke affair with Chelsea being alternately baffled and awestruck at the latest in tech advances.
However, the final two episodes of “Chelsea Does” are definitely worth your time.
“Chelsea Does Racism” is certainly the riskier of the final two docs, and like many films that take chances, the risk doesn’t always pay off. Chelsea, who is known for her reliance on racial humor, takes up the topic with her occasionally racist father (who is depicted with a “that’s just dad” condescension), and despite a promising segment where Chelsea is confronted by reps of anti-defamation groups whose members she has offended by her humor, she becomes defensive, offering the well-worn argument that she is an equal-opportunity offender. This is probably the low point of the entire series.
But when Chelsea gets out of her comfort zone, the episode improves dramatically. As in the “Marriage” episode, Chelsea here is at her best when she just listens. Attending a Sons of Confederate Veterans reunion, she gives attendees just enough rope to hang themselves with their own words. In an especially powerful segment, she visits a Slave Trade museum displaying relics of the bondage of slavery and founded by two African-Americans whose museum tour appears to shock even her. And at the U.S./Mexico border, Chelsea conducts a surprisingly frank discussion about undocumented workers with a chatty Border Patrol volunteer.
But the doc’s strongest moments are those dealing with contemporary African-Americans and particularly the violence brought them upon by policemen. She conducts a moving interview with the family of Walter Scott, the unarmed South Carolina man who was shot in the back by a white cop on camera. By letting the family speak, Chelsea says more by keeping quiet than by anything she could add. Most powerful of all is a montage of unarmed black men killed by police over the last few years, set to President Obama’s rendition of “Amazing Grace.”
The episode is not without humor, as African-American comic Loni Love takes Chelsea on a tour of L.A.’s many minority neighborhoods and is stunned but not surprised at her friend’s ignorance of the city’s many communities. Loni brings welcome laughs to an otherwise somber episode.
“Chelsea Does Drugs” Well, it had to happen. Chelsea is, of course, well known for her love of vodka, and she has been frank about her use of pot and other illegal drugs. She has also been accused of glamorizing drugs, and she does make an effort here to talk to former addicts about their experiences and recovery. Still, she smokes on camera with Willie Nelson, enjoys an edible-pot dinner with several comedian friends and takes Adderall and Ambien under the guidance of a neuroscientist, so the glamorization charge is not going away any time soon.
But this particular doc is the only one that approaches a narrative structure as Chelsea and two pals travel to Peru to experience ayahuasca, a particularly powerful hallucinogen, usually used, under the guidance of a shaman, among the Indigenous people of Amazonian Peru. The drug, brewed in a tea, is consumed at a special ceremony, which is fascinating to watch, even if the results are not always pretty.
Produced by Morgan Neville (who won an Oscar for the doc “20 Feet From Stardom”) and well-directed by Eddie Schmidt, “Chelsea Does” doesn’t always work, particularly when it takes the easy way out for some unearned laughs. But it does offer Chelsea a lane of her own to work in, and if she can incorporate some of the worthier elements from this series into her forthcoming Netflix talk show, she may have something unique to offer viewers once again.
