The new Netflix comedy special Matt Rife: Lucid – A Crowd Work Special is the first of its kind. As Netflix’s first-ever crowd work special, comedian Matt Rife, who gained a massive social media following particularly for his crowd work skills as a stand-up comedian, took on the challenge of essentially improvising his entire set, feeding off the input and responses of the live audience to make up the entirety of the 54-minute special. Matt Rife: Lucid – A Crowd Work Special is Rife’s second Netflix comedy special following the release of his hour-long Matt Rife: Natural Selection special released in 2023.
Matt Rife was born in September 1995 and will turn 29 in 2024. He is from a small village town in Ohio called North Lewisburg, which has a population of less than 1500 people. Rife currently has 8.4 million followers on Instagram and 19.1 million followers on TikTok, which is where the comedian initially gained international appeal and success. Rife first gained notoriety as an actor and host on the shortlived 2017 reboot of Total Request Live on MTV before having guest appearances on Wild ‘n Out, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, and Fresh Off The Boat. He recently played Travis in an episode of That ’90s Show season 2 on Netflix.
According to Netflix, “We’re all in this together. That’s the basic premise behind Matt Rife’s upcoming Netflix comedy special, where he’ll get up close and personal with his audience for a full hour of crowd work. “I want you guys to be aware you are equally as at fault for how this goes as I am,” he tells his fans. In 2023, the comedian released Walking Red Flag, another crowd work special, on YouTube, which amassed more than 13 million views — and apparently a few haters.” Matt Rife: Lucid – A Crowd Work Special was filmed at The Comedy Zone in Charlotte, North Carolina. It was released on Netflix on August 13, 2024 and is currently available to stream.
10 “I Got On A Ouija Board And Was Like You Up?”
Occurs around the 35-minute mark
Matt Rife had his work cut out for him doing a Netflix special that focused entirely on crowd work, which is considered to be one of his best attributes as a stand-up comedian. Around the 35-minute mark in Matt Rife: Lucid – A Crowd Work Special, which had a consistent theme of dreams and their various meanings, Rife went on a funny tangent about a nightmarish ghost that he humorously found attractive. This led to him speculating about looking to hook up with the ghost and using a Ouija board to summon the ghost for hedonistic reasons. While Rife mostly worked with the crowd to develop his material, some of his setups, like this one, seemed ready to go in his comedic arsenal.
9 “Keep Your Bugle Claws Out Of Me!”
Occurs around the 52-minute mark
Towards the end of Matt Rife: Lucid – A Crowd Work Special, Rife makes a joke about how he doesn’t like a certain area of his body touched during sex, especially when his partner’s fingernails are especially long and sharp. In a wild tangent, Rife calls a woman’s acrylic fingernails “Bugle claws” in reference to the common cone-shaped snack food Bugles, which he points out can be found at virtually every gas station across America. He exclaims, “Get your Bugle claws out of me!” as one of his final off-the-cusp jokes before the end of the special and thanks the crowd for working so well with him to make the ambitious special a reality.
8 “This Better Be Mine.”
Occurs around the 44-minute mark
Rife goes on a funny riff about never before having a wet dream, asking the audience what it’s like. While it’s a funny premise, Rife seems to be serious in that he has never experienced a wet dream before, or he could just be playing along for the bit. He jokes that he had a roommate so if he ever did wake up after a wet dream in bed, he would look over at his roommate across the room and say to him, “This better be mine,” hinting at the end result of the wet dream. It’s a short one-liner at the end of a quick set-up in Matt Rife: Lucid – A Crowd Work Special, but it ultimately delivers one of the sharpest punches from Rife’s live audience collaborators.
7 “Not Enough Horsepower.”
Occurs around the 14-minute mark
In the first half of Matt Rife: Lucid – A Crowd Work Special, Rife jokes about a particular machine that some women use to masturbate that has a surprising amount of power behind it. Rife describes the instrument on stage to the live audience, using his body to demonstrate exactly what he was talking about in case there was any disconnect. Rife jokes about how some women claim that men can’t make them climax, using the example of the high-powered toy as the exact reason as to why that complaint may be true. He jokes with the crowd about how a figurative woman would still say that there’s “not enough horsepower” on the high-powered toy.
6 “She’s The Witch!”
Occurs around the 40-minute mark
Rife was able to use some callback references in Netflix’s Matt Rife: Lucid – A Crowd Work Special. One of the most effective examples of this was the quick callback to a woman who has a recurring dream throughout her life of her being chased by the same witch. The crowd member explains that she has had this dream every week since she was a teenager and says she’s in her 40s now. Rife and the audience are shocked to learn of this but move on to another audience member who also has a recurring nightmare that her partner is cheating on her. He turns to the original audience member and says “She’s the witch“, which gets a big laugh from the rest of the crowd.
5 “I Thought You Were Cam Newton.”
Occurs around the 2-minute mark
Netflix’s Matt Rife: Lucid – A Crowd Work Special starts off strong with Rife pointing out a crowd member’s eccentric Western-themed outfit. The man has a large cowboy hat and boots with outrageously long toes that make them look nearly impossible to walk in. Rife gets the audience member to let him examine his boot onstage so that the entire crowd can witness how bizarre and hilarious the boots are. The crowd member seems to be enjoying Rife’s mild roasting, even as Rife says to him “I thought you were Cam Newton” in reference to the former NFL quarterback who also has an eccentric fashion sense. While Rife did do some light roasting on certain audience members, his material was more collaborative than insulting.
4 “You Know How A Stepdad Snores?”
Occurs around the 48-minute mark
Rife really finds his stride with wrangling the audience’s feedback towards the end of Netflix’s Matt Rife: Lucid – A Crowd Work Special. Thanks to a well-intentioned audience member who volunteered to be vulnerable and told Rife about the fact that her friend caught her moaning in her sleep, Rife was able to work with the material and get one of the biggest laughs of the night. Rife was trying to gauge whether the crowd member’s moaning was one that sounded pleasurable or more like a painful type of snore heard from something who might have sleep apnea. He asks if it was like how a stepdad snores before doing a funny interpretation of a loud and coarse gasping snore, which gets a big pop from the audience.
3 “Halloween Decorations.”
Occurs around the 44-minute mark
Continuing on the extended wet dream segment discussed previously in Netflix’s Matt Rife: Lucid – A Crowd Work Special, Rife comes up with a hilarious albeit gross description of how that scenario might look like in the case of an audience member’s personal anecdote. The crowd member reveals that the only time he had ever experienced a wet dream before was during basic training camp when he was enlisted in the military. While this is hilarious in its own right, Rife takes the unhinged scenario one step further, joking that if the audience member had been on the top bunk of the bunk bed, the person below him might have though someone had decorated for Halloween upon waking up.
2 “That Is The Last Place You Wanna Find Hair In Your Food.”
Occurs around the 28-minute mark
In what is arguably the funniest line in Netflix’s Matt Rife: Lucid – A Crowd Work Special, Rife jokes about the hilarious notion of eating at a strip club. An open-book crowd member reveals that he would have liked to have been a pole dancer in another life in response to Rife’s prompt about unrealized dreams. The audience member goes on to say that he likes going to strip clubs and admiring the women but also enjoys going there for brunch, which gets a roar of laughter and shock from both Rife and the crowd. Rife uses this moment to come up with a hilarious line, “That is the last place you wanna find hair in your food,” which keeps the momentum going around halfway through the special.
1 “Matt Went Backstage & Took Out His Obviously Fake Jawline.”
Occurs around the 54-minute mark
Some of the funniest content from Netflix’s Matt Rife: Lucid – A Crowd Work Special was in the closing credits segment that did a brief “What happened to…” shtick on Rife and some of the notable crowd members who participated in the special. The funniest of them might have been Rife’s own jab at himself, turning to the camera and having the screen fade to monochrome with the words, “Matt went backstage and took out his teeth and obviously fake jawline.” Rife was the subject of social media speculation that he had undergone plastic surgery on his face, particularly his jawline, rumors that he publicly denied. Still, it makes a hilarious self-reflective way to end his second Netflix special and the first of its kind.