Buress meets the moment
the mug shot as if it were a photo shoot. “As I always do, I request a preproduction meeting with the photographer to discuss vision,” he says. It’s a riotously funny story that takes an abrupt turn at the end when he finds out that the officer was arrested himself after choking someone in a bar, then fleeing the scene. “How about if you run away from the cops, you can’t be a cop anymore?” Buress says. “Why is this dude still working?”
Buress, who filmed this special in August 2019, keeps the focus of his story narrow and the way he spins it is far less overtly political than many other comics’ bits criticizing the police. But the meaning of great comedy adjusts to the moment, and by releasing it now, with the Black Lives Matter movement at the center of public consciousness, Buress makes his own statement. Even though he makes the arrest sound like a benign adventure, he is describing overly aggressive policing that evades accountability and escalates a minor transgression into something far worse. He chuckles throughout, often at himself, but there is a darkness here that will be more visible to some people now than when he shot it.
Buress never gets particularly grave, but he bristles under the surface. His story plays like a comic revenge fantasy, one that stings because it is real, something he keeps reminding his audience. Buress doesn’t just name the police officer. He shows local news coverage and quotes news articles. He even introduces his defense lawyer in the audience. He explains that after he was arrested, he found three suitable options but went with this guy, because his last name was Bieber, because, hey, why not?