‘Katt Williams: The Last Report’ Review: An Enjoyable, Political, & Uplifting Netflix Comedy Special

In certain cultures, there’s a chronology to serving food, where you start out eating the most unpalatable thing on the menu so that everything you consume after that seems amazing in terms of quality and taste. Based on personal experience only, that unappetizing item usually is the bitter gourd, which you get either in the boiled or deep-fried form. Actually, it doesn’t matter how the bitter gourd has been prepared; it’s going to destroy your taste buds. Hence, if you eat the most basic chicken dish, or whatever the veggie alternative is, after that, you’re going to think that you’re eating a slice of heaven. And as long as you are having a good time, it’s not really important if the meal is objectively good or not. I think Netflix is doing the same thing with its stand-up comedy specials. In the last 3 months, they gave us 4 back-to-back shows that were genuinely depressing to get through. I mean, it actually made me question why I decided to dip my toes back into the world of stand-up comedy. Then Mo Gilligan came around, and even though his jokes were just decent, they felt enjoyable. The same goes for Katt Williams, who isn’t exactly doing anything radical, but at the very least, he is giving us a fun time.

Directed by Troy Miller, Katt Williams hits the ground running in The Last Report by chastising ICE for turning the USA into a nightmarish hellscape for everyone who is not White. And, unlike Mike Epps, he does it without making any stereotypical Mexican jokes. With that out of the way, he starts cherishing women and their private parts, and when he intersperses those jokes with these small musical numbers, you understand that the stand-up special isn’t going to be straightforward. There’s going to be beats and physical comedy as well, and I think that’s a great way of differentiating your brand from the usual crop of comics. I mean, these guys (I mean it in a gender-neutral way) perform on these enormous stages decked out with lights, screens, and musical systems, and yet they don’t use them in creative ways. Gilligan’s special had some great cinematography and visual effects. Williams’ work is not quite on that level, but it’s better than nothing. Coming back to “the plot,” Williams’ set about ageism and living healthily—because medication and healthcare are becoming expensive—is really relevant. It hits a little too close to home, because most millennials couldn’t really enjoy their 20s due to the pandemic, and they have to deal with all kinds of physiological and psychological complications in their 30s while trying to make ends meet.

Williams takes some swings at celebrities for their “weight loss” regimens, which is, again, relevant as hell. Unrelated to The Last Report, or maybe somewhat related, because Williams does bring up the Super Bowl and Bad Bunny, Serena Williams literally promoted a weight-loss injection of some kind during the Super Bowl and is receiving an understandable amount of backlash. And I think it’s important to critique that unnatural stuff through online hate and stand-up comedy, because if you are healthy, weight loss is something that you don’t need to spend money on. Celebs get paid to look the way they do; you don’t. You are alright the way you are, and the only thing you should be focusing upon is whether or not you have the energy to do your 9-5 job without collapsing. “Looksmaxxing” or having a V-taper physique shouldn’t be at the top of your priority list. With all that said, Williams does partake in a bit of body shaming by targeting Kash Patel, and I think that that’s fair. I mean, a certain set of documents has been out there in the open for quite a few weeks, and names have been named, and yet this guy, the director of the FBI, just sits there and does nothing? So, yeah, if you are feeling hopeless, feel free to draw some catharsis from Williams’ commentary on Patel’s eyes.

Katt draws a pretty thick line between the common folk suffering from mental health issues and celebs suffering from mental health issues. And I think this is going to rub people the wrong way, because we still worship celebrities too much. I don’t agree with everything that Katt says, but I do think that the phrase “seek therapy” has lost all its impact, because therapy has become so unaffordable. At this stage, going crazy is cheaper than trying to fix yourself. You should try to avoid going off the rails and have a support system that’ll look after you, but if you don’t have that, umm, choose a god and start praying, I guess. And it becomes evident from Katt’s Illuminati set that it’s really tough to stay sane in this day and age. There was a time when conspiracy theories used to be treated as nothing but jokes, because they used to feel too preposterous to be true. Even the Illuminati seemed like something that exists in fiction. But now that there’s photographic proof of our worst nightmares, most of which happened on a singular island, it’s mind-boggling. It’s truly bizarre that the world hasn’t come to a halt because we’ve been indoctrinated to keep going or die. So, maybe we should be thankful that comics like Katt, through their jokes, are shedding some light on this cult of rich people and how the law doesn’t apply to them.

A lot of jokes in The Last Report are meant for those who are chronically online, but Katt does a good job of delivering exposition in a hilarious fashion. I haven’t watched the Jake Paul versus Mike Tyson fight, but Katt provided enough context to make it funny. I have a decent idea of the specifics of what went down during the buildup to Donald Trump’s second win and everything that he has done after the fact, which is why that part of his set was quite amusing to me as well. Katt’s commentary on farming is incredibly relevant, especially because we are seeing so many farmers’ protests all over the world. However, Katt’s concluding bit about how one should be grateful with what they have been endowed with “down there” in order to avoid swerving into the Dark Side (and by “Dark Side,” Katt is talking about genocidal freaks or rapists) is low-key uplifting. I mean, there is some substance to it because male insecurity is really the biggest reason for everything that’s going wrong with this world. Maybe if we are satisfied with who we are, and if we exit this cycle of constantly comparing ourselves to others, we can support each other and progress as a society. If that seems like a tall order, well, we are doomed.

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