In my humble opinion, stand-up comics should do away with that subtitle that they add after their name. I understand the reason behind it, but either they should treat each stand-up act as a sequel, with just a number after their name, or they should have nothing at all because, most of the time, that subtitle doesn’t make any sense. Recently, I watched Ricky Gervais’ latest Netflix special, and it was titled Ricky Gervais: Mortality. It had nothing to do with the concept of mortality, being mortal, or even its antonym, immortality. Then I saw Marcello Hernandez: American Boy, which had a bit of commentary on what it meant to be Latino in White America, and the rest of its runtime was just him screaming like the goats from Love and Thunder. Kill Tony: Once Upon a Time in Texas had that subtitle just because it was happening in Texas; the comedians sometimes brought up the fact that they were in Texas, but there were hardly any jokes about that place or mention of any experiences that the comedians had in that state. And, spoiler alert, the subtitle Mike Epps: Delusional doesn’t make any sense until the comedian says a few lines on the topic of being delusional before closing his set.
Directed by Royale Watkins, Mike Epps starts off Delusional by addressing how ICE is terrorizing Mexicans. It’s not really funny, and I don’t mean it in a “People are dying and you are joking about it” way. It just didn’t get a laugh out of me. I mean, if your concern for Mexicans is limited to the availability of tacos, then I don’t even know what to say about it. That’s like the most stale way of stereotyping Mexicans. To be honest, Epps’ whole set can be defined with that one word: stale. He talks a bit about Donald Trump, and it’s neither here nor there. If you have seen one Trump impression, you have seen them all. And at this point, mocking him by talking in a funny voice isn’t going to cut it, because he has become something more than just that president who partakes in some form of clownery every day. That guy is doing some controversial stuff, and your comedy has to be sharp to even make a dent in whatever iron-clad reputation he’s creating for himself. As if that’s not bad enough, Epps then moves to Diddy and begins blaming the girls for putting themselves in that situation, because they were too greedy for free drinks. How’s that even original? Every guy in their 50s says stuff like this on a daily basis, that too for free. You’re getting paid, Epps; do better.
Mike’s joke about pretending to be Chris Brown by dancing like him is straight out of TikTok. That joke has been done so many times by normies that Brown himself has reacted to it. And, yes, when a regular guy mocks Brown’s dancing skills, it’s funny; when Epps does it after doing a Diddy joke, it doesn’t hit. Epps follows that up with the most insane and disgusting rant on women. What’s hilarious is that he then follows that up with some nonsense about women being the caretakers of men, because that’s how God has made them. This mindset was retired in the 2010s, brother. Yes, I know that men are trying to bring back a lot of old and regressive traditions in the name of upholding the values of our society because they have come to the realization that feminism and women becoming independent is robbing men of a human punching bag. So, here’s Epps, voicing every man’s need to have a woman in their life, who will be allowed to occasionally critique “their man,” as long as these men get to insult these women for simply being critical of their ineptitude. In my opinion, if men hate women so much, they should stay the hell away from them; it’s not that hard. You just have to undo all that hetero-brainwashing that society has done on you.
Mike’s bit about every White person being a potential cop did get a laugh out of me, because it’s true that people that come from a background of oppressing others do move around the world like they own it. But then he turns the whole section on its head to show that maybe all those White people pretending to be cops are in the right, because almost every Black person is guilty of some crime or the other. Epps doubles down on that stereotype by talking about how he himself had to sell drugs in order to make ends meet, for which he ended up doing time in jail. I suppose there are two ways to look at this. Either you can say that Epps is reinforcing stereotypes, because that’s what the folks want to see. Or you can say that Epps is holding up a mirror to society and telling us that the system is so lopsided, and against the upliftment of Black people, that the community ends up doing the most stereotypical things imaginable. And when those stereotypes are propagated through various forms of media, it fortifies the biases that you have. So, I don’t really know what Epps’ intent here is. He does say that he is essentially White, so, yeah, make of that what you will.
The last 15 minutes of Mike Epps: Delusional is the worst segment in the whole stand-up act, because it’s just a rundown of everything that he has done in his life topped up with, as mentioned before, the importance of being delusional in order to make it big. First of all, if you have to talk about every stand-up act and movie that you have done in your Netflix special, instead of wowing audiences with your comedy, thereby compelling them to look up your work, you are doing something wrong. Second of all, does Epps really think that just being delusional makes all the difference in the world? To be honest, there are way too many delusional people out there who are turning this planet into an unlivable hellscape. If anything, we need sane, rational people who are educating themselves and the people around them to do some good. And third of all, and at the cost of sounding repetitive, stop misleading me with your goddamn subtitles. If you want “delusional” to be your stand-up act’s subtitle, integrate that into every joke you crack instead of dedicating a few lines to that word, which has nothing to do with the entire set. If you can’t do that, remove that bloody subtitle; at least that’ll allow us to watch these Netflix comedy specials with zero expectations, and we’ll leave neither satisfied nor disappointed.
