Tear Jerker / Bo Burnham

Inside has its own page.

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Words Words Words

• "One Man Shows" has some moving moments, primarily due to Bo's acting skills in the track.
  • The "inappropriate musician" bit, which has Bo playing someone who is trying to convince his friend not to commit suicide by jumping off presumably a building. He fails, but luckily that's where the "inappropriate musician" part comes in.
  • The "boy and his dog" bit, which has Bo playing a kid who has to sell his dog due to financial issues. When the dog makes the emotional toll bigger than it already is, the kid breaks down in tears and states that he hates the dog. The punchline is that he is not talking about his dog, but a Mexican slave worker instead.
• "Art Is Dead", easily the most jarring and realistic song Bo had written at the time. It gradually gets darker and sadder as his self-loathing becomes more and more intense as the song concludes, ending in a Creator Breakdown where he asks not to be respected, begs God for forgiveness, and denounces his comedy career as something he may just "grow out of" because he's "just a kid."
  • Made even worse on the album, since listeners segue from a stand-up track directly into this song.

what.

• The aptly named "Sad," once you look past its dark humor.
  I saw an old man get hit by a train, he didn't see it in the pouring rain.
• "Left Brain, Right Brain":
  • When Right Brain confronts Left Brain towards the song's climax.
    "You think you're the right one every time. You think you know everything, but you don't know anything at all. Half of his problems were supposed to be mine. But you wanted everything! I hope that you're happy, because he's sure not..."
  • When Left Brain finally snaps after Right Brain calls his Rubik's Cube a toy.
    "WELL, AT LEAST I DID MY FUCKING JOB! I kept him working, I kept him productive! You were supposed to look after him. You were supposed to keep him emotionally stable through all this, now you're trying to blame me for how he's feeling? HOW HE'S FEELING? He's feeling unhappy, it's because you failed him. You did this to him, he hates you, I know he does. HE FUCKING HATES YOU!"
  • Right Brain breaks down crying after this outburst. Left Brain tries to apologize, only for Right Brain to say he isn't actually sorry. Left Brain doesn't respond.
  • This quick line at the end before both brains re-merge is really sad.
    Left Brain: Look, we can fix him like this, we can make him happy again, I promise!
• One of his examples of words that would never go together is "I'm your father and I loved your comedy show."
• "From God's Perspective":
  • Towards the end, there's this bomb:
    You argue and you bicker and you fight
    Atheists and catholics, Jews and Hindus argue day and night
    Over what they think is true
    But no one entertains the thought of maybe God does not believe in you
  • The song ends on this quietly brutal note:
    I'm not gonna give you love just because I know that you want me to
    If you want love, then the love has got to come from you.
• "We Think We Know You" can be pretty emotional to watch/hear, considering it's basically his acknowledgment of all his major criticisms and how people act like they know Bo better than he knows himself and how much pain and self-doubt he's had to endure over the years.
• "Nerds" (one of the album-exclusive studio tracks) in and of itself is more heartwarming (as it's about Bo standing up for nerds and outcasts who are bullied at school), but it's this section that triggers:
  She stood in line and got cut
  Tried out, got cut
  Loved art, but the budget got cut
  Then she got numb and she only felt when she knelt and cut

Make Happy

• The start of the show has a couple.
  • The Netflix recording starts with Bo waking up in clown make-up and a red nose and making his way to the theater. It sounds funny, and the surrealism is high, but there's something about him and the look on his face that screams Sad Clown.
    • The way the footage syncs up with the audio of the audience reacting to the opening bits of the special before Bo gets onstage. We see Bo opening the blinds of his bedroom and hear his audience cheering, as if to imply that he's begun performing from the moment he wakes up.
    • The robotic voice-over at the start also makes a point about how unfunny the world is. Mind you, one of the pieces of evidence is "Guy Fieri owns multiple functioning restaurants."
    • After Bo says "Let's get introspective", he genuinely gets on the ground and sings a rather poignant lyric about how unhappy he really is. It takes a couple listens to get past the Mood Whiplash, but...
• "Can't Handle This", the last live song of the special. It starts out with Bo making jokes about the diameter of Pringles cans and overstuffing Chipotle burritos and ends with him honestly admitting that he doesn't know if he loves, hates, or fears the audience and the power they have over him and that they really don't know anything, such as his mental health slowly declining over all of this recognition he feels he doesn't deserve.
  Look at them, they're just staring at me, like
  "Come and watch the skinny kid
  With a steadily declining mental health
  And laugh as he attempts
  To give you what he cannot give himself"
  • Even the Pringle cans and burritos could qualify as tearjerkers if you look at them metaphorically.
    • The can represents the world with all the Pringles being its people, when Bo tries to reach everyone, only a few will listen. Yet he still tries (tilting the can into his mouth), but all he gets are people who don't understand or refuse to listen.
    • As for the burrito, he is trying to appeal to as many people (fit in as many ingredients) as possible, but it backfires and he gets a shitty burrito. He talks about how he wished he had been warned about this, wishing he had been told how shitty fame really is.
• "Are You Happy?", the final song of the special, filmed separately in a dimly lit room with a piano following Bo walking offstage. He calls the song a "parting questionnaire," asking the viewers if they're happy after watching his show, and expresses his thoughts on how he wants to experience happiness but feels that he'd be so dissatisfied if he was.
  On a scale from one to zero,
  Are you happy?
  'Cause you're on your own from here
  So, are you happy?
  (...)
  So if you know or ever knew how
  to be happy
  On a scale from one to two now,
  Are you happy?
  You're everything you hated.
  Are you happy?
  Hey look ma... I made it.
  Are you happy?
  • Many people found this particular line to be gut-wrenching, especially considering it's never explained.
    Oh God, my dad was right.
  • The fact that the room Bo records this song (the guest house of the LA home he had at the time) is the same room where he eventually filmed his next special, Inside, which was about him undergoing even worse declines in mental health than he expresses in this special.

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