It’s a little tricky for me to go about “unpacking” Bo Burnham’s Inside, as the special is largely concerned with Bo Burnham unpacking himself. What does Bo feel, and how does Bo feel about that, and how does Bo feel about feeling that way about that – all these questions and more are answered as the special progresses. Across an hour and change of songs and sketches, Burnham offers a wildly self-conscious reflection on the already self-conscious ways we present ourselves as modern, perpetually online human beings, exacerbated by the forced solitude of the COVID age. Through cataloging and critiquing his every wayward thought, Burnham seeks to paradoxically create something universal, something that speaks to a common experience of watching the world burn from inside your own shrieking brain. It’s harrowing, hilarious, and maybe even a touch profound. 

The skit where Burnham first presents a brief song, then critiques that song, then critiques that critique, might best summarize the profound anxiety of Inside. “It’s pretty unlikable that I have this desperate need to seem intelligent,” says one level of self-reflection, to which the next-level impulse responds “it’s a defense mechanism – I criticize myself before anyone else can, but self-awareness does not absolve anybody of anything.” Through Burnham’s derisively nested videos, he articulates the agony of knowing our faults but still seeking to express ourselves, and the moment-to-moment internal experience of assessing your own work. He may know self-awareness does not absolve anybody of anything, but goddamnit, he’s still going to try.

Inside’s self-consciousness stretches beyond its actual skits, extending into and ultimately defining the very structure of the special. Alongside the final, polished performances, Inside offers constant glimpses behind the scenes, essentially working as both a special and the making-of video for that same special. Every errant joke or statement of opinion from Burnham is bookended by calls to shut himself up, or sequences of him replaying the previous skit with a strained expression, or cuts of him fiddling with software and lighting setups, or the aforementioned self-critiques.

Burnham’s anxiety and desire to please are palpable, but the ultimate result of all this backstage access feels less defensive than earnest. By revealing all these other aspects of the production process, Burnham humanizes the effort that goes into each seemingly “effortless” online video, the diligent work that props up each slice of content. Having grown up performing on the internet, Burnham is well aware of the stagecraft and planning that goes into even allegedly raw, “confessional” online theater. He knows that degree of mediation cannot be eliminated, and thus elects to invite the audience over to his side of the stage, such that an unvarnished portrayal of his process might lessen the distance in its own way.

But a special entirely concerned with Bo Burnham’s opinions on Bo Burnham’s work would be a little much. Fortunately, his internal reflections are complimented by lots of external commentary, as he attempts to catalog the ills of the world, or at least just comment on its humorous eccentricities. Through songs like “How The World Works,” Burnham uses a goofy sock puppet to articulate the injustices of society in an earnest, amusing, and emphatically non-condescending way. The goal, as with his personal reflections, is connection: a message untrusted is a message unheeded, and so Burnham takes every measure possible to earn and maintain our trust. He tries not to exude authority, and instead seeks fallible relatability, while promoting two central theses: “the modern world is corrupted in every way by our capitalist dystopia and online culture” and “it is okay to feel this way, I feel it too.”

Each of these two pillars is attacked consistently and with general success. Though How The World Works runs through as many worthy targets as possible with commendable efficiency, Burnham is generally more comfortable reflecting on the specific crimes of the internet, making “Everything All Of The Time” Inside’s most pointed cultural statement. Even while rattling off the chaos of the modern internet like a carnival barker from hell, Burnham can’t help but turn his criticism inward, reflecting on how a lifetime of online screens and advertisement would naturally mutate culture and identity into our modern performative madness. As someone who grew up in the early ‘00s, I consider myself lucky not to fully relate to the internet’s native children; at least I got to hit my mid-twenties before attempting to turn my personality into a brand.

On the other hand, confessional reflections like “I Don’t Wanna Know” strike me like a knife in the chest. It is terrifying to put yourself out there online, terrifying to express something true to your experience, and terrifying for it to be judged by an audience of strangers. Burnham’s simultaneous need to express and fear of being known are familiar to me; I’ve basically stopped communicating on Twitter because it’s too stressful to be seen, and I know that hurts my reach, and thus my ability to gain subscribers and continue this work I love. At a certain point, I had to choose my mental health over the need to loudly perform my thoughts intrinsic to my profession; when Burnham says panic attacks drove him offstage for five years, I can only think of my own essential yet still shame-inducing retreat from the spotlight. How does one perform sincerely when the perception of that sincerity pays your rent?

There’s a funny, inevitable contradiction in how, in spite of Burnham’s desperation for authenticity, this special only hits so hard because he’s such a master performer. He’s a great singer, songwriter, and video producer, and he parodies with understanding and love, whether it’s the workout jam training montage of “Problematic” or the cultivated self-portrait of an Instagram profile. Burnham struggles mightily with the simple fact that polished video productions are both inherently inauthentic and the best way to get your point across. But as the special continues, its chronological nature (complete with check-ins for events like Burnham’s thirtieth birthday) provides its own sort of authenticity, contextualizing each song with the panic attack that preceded it.

Through this process, Burnham finds something relatable and human not in his actual finished songs, but in the emotional torment and professional craft informing them. Burnham performing a pitch-perfect genre parody with expertly delivered jokes is not a human experience; Burnham staring back at that parody, brow furrowed, undeniably is. Through this unveiling of both craft and time, we see the human yearning even in songs that seem desperate for virality, grasping for that random alchemy of topicality, specificity, and universality that somehow results in social (and thus economic) validation. Can you have your cake and eat it too? Can virality and sincerity coexist?

As songs and their self-scouring interludes stack up, you begin to feel Burnham’s struggle for a “punchline song,” for a song that says it all and sums up everything he’s feeling. And as with everything in this wildly self-referential production, that meta-struggle eventually becomes something like a conscious thesis: the eternal struggle for a more perfect articulation of our common hardship. Burnham never quite manages it, but that’s inevitable when you’re attempting to tell everyone’s story and your own story at once. Ultimately, Burnham’s true position sits in the harrowing intersection of the special’s last two standouts, That Funny Feeling and All Eyes On Me. The unrelenting terror of the external world, the desperate need to be known and loved (or more cynically, the unstoppable causes of our anxieties, and the cure that is losing yourself in solipsistic Content).

Is there some greater truth to be gleaned from that intersection? Can the madness of online identity and the chaos of late capitalism contort into some cohesive, encouraging conclusion? All Burnham can hope for is that his thoughts read as genuine, disarming our countless emotional padlocks in order to praise our anxious commonalities. Burnham makes it so abundantly, emphatically clear that he is seeking a common sentiment that his final calls of “pray for me” feel like a prayer for all of us, all us self-conscious, trivia-maddened children of the digital age. By lyrics alone, it’s hard to find much hope in his paeans towards a place “where everybody knows,” towards the feigned sincerity and fatigued apathy of digital existence. Only Burnham’s desperation sells his plea; when he picks up the camera, he is joining his hands with ours, inviting us to share his stage and his world. Is acknowledgment of shared tragedy somehow a path beyond it? Catharsis might not be enough, but it’s welcome all the same.

In his last song, the characteristically self-conscious Goodbye, Burnham for the first time admits that performing when no one’s watching might not be so bad. It’s a return to the quasi-vaudeville style that is his usual mode, but for Burnham, it’s clear that this heightened, genre-conscious space is cozy, nostalgic, and still genuinely earnest. Throughout this special, Burnham asks “is it possible to find authentic connection through the commercialized, mediated, performative venue of the internet? Are we all doomed, or is there something beautiful in our struggle, something human in our navigation of this brave new world?” I imagine Bo’s still searching, but these tears on my cheek are answer enough for me.

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