The Best Stand Up Specials of the Year

December 18, 2025·1 hr 21 min·8 clips

Kumail Nanjiani's comeback special feels like discovering ice cream after years of frozen yogurt.

The episode opens with Jesse and Catherine establishing context: Catherine has been compiling this Vulture list for roughly five or six years, and this year felt unusually strong early before being complicated by a wave of attention directed at the Riyadh Comedy Festival. Both note the persistent problem of specials released in late November and December, which come out after list deadlines and have limited time to break through culturally, and they recommend comedians aim for summer or early fall releases. Among specials that did not make Catherine's list but that Jesse highlights: Kevin Hart's Acting My Age on Netflix, which both agree shows Hart unusually locked in and self-aware; Roy Wood Jr.'s Hulu special; two strong Ali Sadiq specials; Adam Pally's deliberately antagonistic special; and Sarah Sherman's December special, which Jesse laments was released too late to make any lists despite being exceptional. The ten specials discussed in depth include: Jordan Jensen's Take Me With You on Netflix at number ten, noted for dark laugh-through-discomfort humor about childhood and trauma that is as disturbing as it is funny; Earthquake's Joke Telling Business on Netflix at number nine, praised for mastery of stripped-down craft and effective political commentary through the repeated phrase these aren't jokes; Ian Edwards's untitled YouTube special at number eight, highlighted for exceptional joke writing that consistently subverts expected punchlines while making hack premises feel entirely fresh; Bill Burr's Drop Dead Years on Hulu at number seven, celebrated as one of Burr's funniest specials and as the latest installment in a decades-long arc of visible personal growth that is rare in the form; Atsuko Okatsuka's Father on Hulu at number six, praised for its abstracted visual approach to family and parenting material that avoids conventional autobiography while remaining emotionally precise; and Mark Maron's Panicked on HBO at number five, discussed both as a strong individual special and as a potential model for how comedians will market future specials by integrating press appearances into a cohesive cultural moment. Throughout, Catherine and Jesse discuss what distinguishes a special as a formal object, when a comedian's presence and material cohere into something that feels like a genuine piece of art rather than a recorded performance, and how the form is evolving under current pressures around distribution, timing, and the fragmentation of audience attention.

As heard by us

A sharp conversation about stand-up that keeps its focus on craft and the choices a special makes.

Jesse David Fox and Catherine Van Arendonk approach the special with real attention to how it is built, not just what it jokes about. They move from shape and theme into marriage, helplessness, codependency, and the strain of following a big previous outing.

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Want a smart take on which stand-up specials held up this year?

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