How to get your own Netlix Special

If you’re like me you log onto Netflix and have no idea what to watch. The Home Page is filled with a dizzying assortment of thumbnails for shows and documentaries and specials – most of which I’ve never heard of. Okay, I clicked on the BONDING trailer to see what that was all about. Zoe Levin as a dominatrix piqued my interest. Not a lot of hot Jewish girls in leather. But otherwise, I’m seeing all those series from other countries, or fourth seasons from shows I never watched and it’s somewhat overwhelming.

If I don’t plan to watch long I tend to sample comedy specials. If they’re funny I stay with them, if they’re Amy Schumer I write blog posts. But I’ve discovered some terrific new comics I was unfamiliar with.

So I come upon a special by someone named Brene Brown. Who? Well, she must be famous if she has a Netflix Special. So I click on and it starts like every other stand up special – the performer backstage (basically a waste of the first three minutes), and then this attractive middle-aged woman steps out onto the stage. It’s a big theatre with balconies. You can’t do a Netflix special without balconies. And she immediately gets a standing ovation. Have I been marooned on a desert island for five years? Who is this person getting a standing O? She starts off with a few mild jokes that are getting screams. And then I start to realize she’s not actually a comedienne, she’s a self-help guru. But she’s one for Millennials because every sentence was peppered with “So I’m like… and then he’s like… and I’m like… and like they’re like…”

She’s going on for five minutes trashing the suggested covers for her book and of course the crowd is roaring. What the fuck is this? I’m wondering.

Finally, she makes reference to a TED talk she once did. So I decided to turn off the special and seek the TED talk.

And what I saw was almost a completely different person. Brene Brown was a social worker/researcher at the University of Houston. She’s also a mom and has a PHD. Nothing fancy, nothing glitzy. She gave a very earnest straightforward speech on the value of vulnerability in self improvement. She was very genuine. Not a single “I was like” in the entire presentation. This was 2010.

I guess Oprah or somebody discovered it and the TED talk went viral. And suddenly Brene Brown is a social media star. She now has a bunch of books (I assume with covers that she is allowed to approve), a top draw lecturer, and Netflix Special-er.

Her message sounds sound and every few years another self-help guru comes along (where is Susan Powter when we need her?), but to me the most interesting thing about Brene Brown is her transformation from academic lecturer to zeitgeist celebrity. She’s now got the new hair, new wardrobe, new zippy patter, new Millennial-speak. Someone should really study that phenomenon. Hey, maybe there’s a Hulu Special in your future.

from By Ken Levine