Bo Burnham Has Turned His Absence Into Performance

Early in his bold and vexing new reality show, Jerrod Carmichael hears a knock at the door and opens it to find a very tall man in a ski mask and goggles just standing there. He pauses to process, then concludes: “This makes sense.”

Most viewers probably thought: Really? But certain comedy fans would come to a different response: Welcome back, Bo Burnham.

Sure, we don’t know it’s him. On “The Jerrod Carmichael Reality Show” (HBO), this lanky masked man is referred to as Anonymous and his voice is disguised. But if this isn’t Bo Burnham, it’s a pretty good impression — or at least, one of him dressed to rob a bank.

Burnham has been conspicuously quiet since rocketing to superstar status by producing one of the signal works of art about the pandemic, the 2021 musical comedy “Inside.” He dropped out of a role in a TV series and appeared in no new specials, movies or live shows. Except for “Inside” outtakes, he hasn’t shown up in any new work — until, possibly, now.

Starring in three of the eight episodes, Anonymous comes off like a performance piece, half-abstraction and half-person, with no background, identity, face. He stands out more by revealing little, which is only one of the ways he’s in opposition to Carmichael, who is seen doing stand-up in short clips and having thorny, difficult conversations with his loved ones. Anonymous plays a crucial role, an exasperated ombudsman, picking apart the entire enterprise from the inside, providing a critique of its authenticity and the perils of performing for an audience.

These are hallmarks of Bo Burnham’s work dating at least to his far-too-overlooked MTV sitcom, “Zach Stone Is Gonna Be Famous,” a satire of reality shows.

One way to look at “The Jerrod Carmichael Reality Show” is as a counterpoint to the last decade of Burnham works, culminating with “Inside,” which portrays not just the isolation of lockdown, but also the corrosive impact of life in the public eye. Burnham was one of the earliest YouTube stars and later a trenchant critic of such fame.

In “Inside,” he watches one of his teenage videos, grim-faced. The special builds on the idea that performing can destroy your mental health, a point he most directly articulated in his previous Netflix hour, “Make Happy,” which ended with him leaving the stage and walking into the same room where “Inside” takes place. (In an apt coincidence, it happens to be the home where the original “Nightmare on Elm Street” was filmed). “I know very little about anything,” he says. “But what I do know is that if you can live your life without an audience, you should do it.”

CARMICHAEL HAD A DIFFERENT VIEW. The audience, as he sees it, gives him the courage to live more honestly. His comedy shifted course with his last special, “Rothaniel,” which, as it happens, was directed by Burnham. Carmichael came out of the closet publicly in that hour and told family secrets; now, in his reality show, he insists he needs the camera to have tough conversations.

This show features him examining deeply personal and uncomfortable subjects in every episode, whether it’s being a bad friend, cheating on his boyfriend or celebrating being cheated on in his own apartment. He confronts his parents about homophobia and infidelity. The episode in which he emotionally ambushes his father ends with the older man looking trapped and desperate to escape the view of the camera.

Most of the humor is cringe comedy, like explaining to his father the difference between daddies, bears and otters. This show can feel like a provocation, a dare to hate Carmichael, then love him and back again. Whereas Burnham suggests that the audience distorts reality, Carmichael says he needs it to tell the truth. He refuses to go anywhere without a camera crew no matter how much it frustrates his loved ones.

He’s been accused of exploiting private pain for entertainment, and there’s some validity to that. Is needing the camera so he can be honest a way to rationalize invading others’ privacy? He can seem like a bully, but there’s just enough tenderness in this portrait of everyone he trains his camera on (not to mention self-criticism) to complicate your reaction. The show wants to challenge and confuse and move its audience. Even in moments when he’s hard to take, I respect that he’s aiming for something other than Mid TV.

Burnham plays a valuable role here, standing in for the flummoxed audience. When he calls Carmichael an exhibitionist, the star responds, “What’s wrong with that?” Burnham comes back with: “There’s public and private and there’s masturbatory public.”

This is a harsh but accurate description of some of this reality show, but part of what it questions is whether all personal art taps into some voyeuristic pleasures, Burnham’s included. He’s been making this critique of the dangers of constantly performing for more than a decade. And while he skewers Carmichael for exposing himself, Burnham (or, OK, Anonymous) is participating, too, even if he acts disgusted by the whole thing.

As Burnham himself once said, “Self-awareness does not absolve anybody of anything.”

TO BE A LITTLE MORE CYNICAL, once you reach a certain level of fame and success, disappearing can be a smart career move. Quitting his show and going underground transformed Dave Chappelle from a popular comedian into a modern myth.

It’s harder to escape the public eye in the social media era. Burnham inspires an obsessive community of fans on Reddit and TikTok who analyze every scrap of information about him. If you’re paying close attention, he hasn’t vanished at all. He’s in your feed wearing a mask at the Emmys or walking with his girlfriend, Phoebe Bridgers. (Asked by a fan why he wore a mask to those awards, he said, “You’ll see”)

The only thing that abhors a vacuum more than nature is the celebrity press. Burnham not only knows this but exploits it.

Earlier this year, an old screen shot from his website circulated in which he predicted he would die on Jan. 17, 2024. An interview from many years ago in which he predicted the same thing went viral. As the day grew closer, his fan base became increasingly worried. Burnham erased most of his social media posts and replaced his avatar with a photo of the ocean, goosing the furor more.

This may be nothing, a prank or part of some future project (my money’s on a collaboration with Ari Aster or Nathan Fielder). But what’s clear is that while he has not appeared onstage in years, Burnham is still alert to his audience. He’s performing absence. His masked man is there but not all there.

Even in shows he’s not involved with, you see this tease. His friends help. A memorable episode of “The Bear,” created by Christopher Storer, who co-directed Burnham’s special “Make Happy,” followed the workers at a fancy Chicago restaurant. The patrons are supposed to include Burnham, and everything about the script creates expectations that he will show up. But he doesn’t. His absence stands out.

“Inside” ended with Burnham in a screening room, watching the show he’s in. The final episode of “The Jerrod Carmichael Reality Show,” which will be released Friday, takes a similar turn, but with Carmichael and Anonymous. The masked man tells Carmichael he wants no part of the series, and adds: “This is going to be viewed by the giant revolting mass of people that is argumentative, insane. That’s a scary collective for the most precious things in your life.”

This echoes what Burnham told me in a 2016 interview: He used to feel that talking about his relationship to the audience was indulgent, but he realized that when everyone has a camera in their pocket, the subject of how it feels to perform is more universally relatable. “To me, they’re a mob,” he said of the audience. “Intimidating, strange and creepy.”

I wonder if Carmichael now is more sympathetic to this point. He appeared on the “Breakfast Club” radio show and responded a bit defensively to criticism while pleading guilty to being an egomaniac.

All artists plumb their personal lives for public consumption. But there is no assurance such vulnerability will be well-received or understood, and assuming so is naïve. The audience likes what it likes — and hates a little bit of everything all of the time.

Bo Burnham understands this well, which is why the masked man might be a clever answer to an impossible question: Once you build a huge and loyal audience performing the damage done by performing for an audience, what’s next?