There is no substitute for the magic of live comedy. You can never fully capture the energy of being in the room during a live comedy show, the interactions the comic has with audience members, seeing people who should be taken aback by jokes laughing along with you, watching an uptight girlfriend glare at her boyfriend as he laughs at something that offends her, knowing everyone in the audience is watching this show together in real time, undistracted by their cell phones, and most important of all, knowing that this experience is one moment in time consumed and fully understood only by those in attendance.

That is why even when a special I am heavily anticipating is released, I know it won’t compare to the greatness of seeing that same material live. I know that a comedy special is truly, what any comic will tell you time and time again, an advertisement for seeing that comic live.

But Infamous manages to capture some of the magic of live comedy on screen in an immersive way I haven’t seen from a special before. I boiled down the immersive feeling of the special to four factors.

●In the days leading up to the special, I knew that everyone watching purchased it from Moment House rather than happening upon it on Netflix. This hammered home the feeling and awareness that I was watching this special in real time with other people. I felt kind of like I was in that theatre or at least part of a special club of people deliberately choosing to watch this specific thing.

●I watched the special live and it felt live. There was a countdown while we waited for the special to start and it started about 20 minutes late (like every live comedy show!) The screen featured a countdown, which ramped up my excitement, and played an absolutely horrible song the entire ten minutes I waited (Bitches in the Waldorf, the Waldorf, Bitches in the Waldorf), which further research shows is a song Schulz created on his podcast Flagrant 2 to make fun of bad rap or Miami culture or both. I can’t really tell. Anyway, his fans are having a blast on reddit coming up with lyrics for the tune.

●When the countdown ended, text flashed on the screen that this was filmed to be an immersive experience and we were advised to turn our volume up.

●Schulz engages with his crowd and we actually got to see audience members Schulz was interacting with and how they responded to him. Normally, comics eschew crowd work when filming a special because it doesn’t translate to the screen and lately, the trend seems to be never filming the audience at all. In Bill Burr’s latest special, you never see the audience and the crowd work he does do, it feel like he is responding to far away voices from a dark void. That works for Burr’s special but Schulz’s special thrives from this more immersive method. And you can absolutely tell that Schulz deliberately went with this approach. Throughout Infamous, you can see camera men in the balconies, contorting themselves to capture footage of audience members. If Schulz is talking to someone in the audience, he wants you to see that audience member’s face. No exceptions. I don’t think this has been done before in a a comedy special.

Don’t get me wrong. Schulz’s special was still an advertisement for seeing comedy live but it was the best advertisement I have ever seen. The crowd is having so much damn fun and you can see it.

Getting into the material, you can see why this special was heightened by its immersive feel. Schulz works by moving from topic to topic, engaging with audience members, and getting their approval for a premise before he jumps in to his jokes. Thus, seeing the reaction of the audience members and understanding that he is indeed getting this buy-in is crucial for the joke to translate fully. The hispanic woman in the third row isn’t really that committal about being on birth control. We see it and hear it for ourselves. So when Schulz’s ultimate punch line about why hispanic people are really called “wetbacks” comes, it hits with maximum force.

Schulz doesn’t have a political point of view. He likes crazy people in crazy situations and gets his material from observing and interacting with them. Indeed, on Tim Dillon’s podcast, Schulz commented that he can’t write jokes in Miami because everyone is happy and chill, just eating, drinking, and having a good time. But comedy shows are full of crazy people eager to share their opinions and Schulz makes that the backbone of the show.

Schulz’s first bit of long material is about how much he misses Trump. It’s a controversial statement and the audience groans add the disapproval he needs to explain himself further. He defends his position saying the group text chats during the Trump Presidency were nonstop fun. (No way is Trump making fun of a disabled person on TV!) And Biden is boring. My favorite line of the night was “Biden doesn’t have merch.” Here, Schulz engages with the crowd by asking them if anyone is excited about Biden. Their silence sets up the next bit of material.

Schulz goes deep into the MAGA hat. Everyone wearing one is smiling and happy because the hat does all of the trash talking for them. He delves into a story about a time he went to Minneapolis and then engages in a back and forth with an audience member in the mezzanine who “WOO HOOs” Minneapolis. Ok, it was really East St. Paul, Schulz confesses and we see the audience member laughing and smiling. Schulz goes back to the story, which is about a woman in a full Viking costume yelling at a Baskin Robbins worker for wearing a MAGA hat. Schulz’s punchline points out the hypocrisy.

Continuing his crowd engagement, Schulz asks the audience to shout out what birth control they are on and engages with them. The pill, IUD, vasectomy, he has something to say about all of it, particularly the vasectomy whose declared recipient is a “bathtub Val Kilmer” who seems “big-dicked” and is sitting next to his hot black wife. She shakes her head at one of the jokes and when Schulz asks “you don’t like that one but is it true?” she can only nod her head. Without being able to see these audience members clearly and confirm for ourselves that the man in question does indeed resemble a “bathtub Val Kilmer,” this format of comedy just doesn’t work.

Schulz engages with black people in the audience, getting them to confirm that black face is wrong. We see them nod and agree. When he gets one of those same people on board for his high-stakes exception for when black face might be OK, the joke is funnier because we see that black people think it is funny. It hammers home that this is a joke we can all enjoy together in good fun; not a political statement to be taken out of context and written up by some woke scold the next morning.

Next, Schulz asks the women of the audience if they enjoy true crime documentaries and he gets a lot of cheers. Schulz’s fiancee is obsessed with true crime and it has caused Schulz to do a deep dive into Ted Bundy. Ted Bundy drove a tan Volkswagen yet lured in and murdered over 50 women. Does the audience want to hear the pickup line Ted Bundy used to ensnare the women he would eventually murder? You bet they do. The material that comes mostly kills but offends some feminists in the audience. Schulz later engages with them and we can see that they are annoyed with him. He has them laughing within seconds and again, being able to see their faces is pivotal. You get to see what everyone at comedy shows knows but you never see captured on screen: a joke that is offensive when written down almost always gets the people that should be most offended to laugh about it live at a comedy show.

Next up, it’s difficult to satisfy a woman in bed. If Schulz had to satisfy a man or woman to save his mom’s life, he knows who he would pick. The punchline is one of those jokes that is genius because it is true and the setup gets us some great physical comedy.

When Schulz talks about Michael Jackson molesting children, I had to wonder was the streaming service really more offended by the abortion material than this material? I would be shocked if the streamer didn’t ask Schulz to cut some of this. Anyway, I am not going to spoil this material but Michael Jordan licking Schulz’s butt was the funniest image of the night.

The abortion material that the streaming service asked Schulz to cut was more than just one joke. He opened with “Texas is trying to take away your scoops scoops, ladies,” and did about five minutes of abortion material. It concluded with a story about living down the street from an abortion clinic, and interacting with protestors. The key joke from this material, where Schulz tells the abortion clinic protestor that his ten year old daughter is hot, was the pro-choice perspective side of the coin from Bill Burr’s pro-life perspective cake abortion joke. I don’t point this out to say that Bill Burr is pro-life or Schulz is pro-choice. They said the jokes they said not out of a genuine political belief but because it was the funniest take they had on the issue. I bring it up because calls for censorship have been coming from left-wing voices. It’s the left that gets offended. Yet Schulz’s ultimate point about abortion was left wing. It makes me believe that the streaming service’s logic in asking Schulz to cut this material was as sophisticated as “abortion controversial. Schulz no can talk about abortion.” It’s disappointing and makes me feel all the more invested in Schulz making gobs of money from this special so that streaming services no longer have any censorship power.

I recommend Infamous, for the uproariously fun content of the special itself and to send a signal in favor of free speech in comedy generally. I If I am trying to convince friends to go to the comedy club I will show them this special. “See, look how much fun they are having!”

As of this writing, Infamous could be purchased exclusively on Moment House for $17.29.

Since then, Infamous is now available for free on YouTube and Schulz has recouped all of the costs and made tons of money on this special. Censorship be damned.