An Offer You Might Not Refuse

Ron White was an "overnight success" when he toured with Jeff Foxworthy, Bill Engvall and Dan "Larry the Cable Guy" Whitney on the Blue Collar Comedy Tour. The four Southern-tinged comedians (although Whitney is from Nebraska) patterned their act along the lines of "The Original Kings of Comedy" and the success allowed White to release the bestselling comedy album of his career, Drunk in Public. The "overnight" part of the story was a misnomer, though, as White had been performing in comedy clubs and touring for several years before meeting Foxworthy and the others. He even had a 1990 album, Tater Salad aka Busted in Des Moines.

But the Blue Collar tour and the success of Drunk in Public made White well and truly famous, and he's followed it up in the 15 years since with five more comedy albums or specials, with the most recent being the Netflix comedy show If You Quit Listening, I'll Shut Up. The wide span between releases, White says in poking fun at himself, represents his work ethic. But as with most comedians, White "road tests" his material before shaping a full-fledged "named" tour and they may take some time in order to put together a whole show.

None of which can obscure the fact that every album or special in the years following Drunk in Public has steadily declined in overall quality. White remains the sarcastic, politically incorrect smart-aleck he showed during the Blue Collar days, but time seems to have made his character more brittle and mean than witty and fun. His storytelling and delivery style remain sharp, which makes the material the likely culprit. Every special has fewer and fewer great laugh lines stuck in the middle of more and more tired-sounding crankiness.

Drunk in Public represented material that White had worked on in some cases for more than a decade -- you used to be able to find a 1990s clip of him doing his "thrown out of a bar" bit in full Mo Betta and mullet glory on YouTube. It was the best of ten-plus years of comedy club storytelling and character crafting. That pool has grown shallower as the years have gone by.

Even though If You Quit Listening comes a full six years after his previous special, it's full of lines and tales that don't quite click. The cynical wit still flashes now and again but the mix is far more heavy on the cynicism than the wit. Drunk in Public had White making himself the punchline of more than one joke, but the newer show takes aim far more often at others than himself, and usually not to good effect. White tells a few jokes that have a lot of mileage on them -- he is by no means the first person to talk about repeatedly calling the office of someone he dislikes who has died and telling the person who answers the phone, "I know he's dead, I just like to hear you say it."

If You Quit Listening may feel "mean" simply because it came at a time when that's the way White himself felt -- he was about to divorce his third wife when it was filmed. But it feels unfunny because a lot of it isn't funny. Enough of it is to suggest that White may have some solid routines left in the tank somewhere, and if Netflix continues to churn comedy specials out at this rate, they may get back around to him when he has some to share.