Nick Youssef Beautifully Shows the Uselessness of Toxic Masculinity on “Take Care”
As historic as it is that Chris Rock performed his latest hour special as a live-to-stream broadcast on Netflix, the vision of the world that Rock paints seems, in a word, defeatist (except for the final passage where he screams about Will Smith being a bitch for slapping him over and over), especially when it comes the whims of men and their relationship to their masculinity. When you remember that Rock is 58, his proclamations about how women’s beauty runs the world seem a little less surprising.
In contrast, Nick Youssef’s latest hour, his special Take Care, presents a subversively nuanced idea of what a man and mental wellness can (and should) be in 2023. Through a seamless work of resonant and funny personal stories with what an actually healthy relationship looks like (i.e. plenty of crying is allowed), the feeling of getting the right depression meds, keen observations of “men being men” from a distance (though still viewed as a man), Nick concludes that men, and really everyone, would do so much better if they took the title of this special to heart.
This hour makes you wonder how, in 2023, toxic masculinity can be so toxic still when there is much more empathetic and evolved side to those folks who go by he/him, but does leave you hopeful that there is a growing death-rattle-ish air to the men afraid of being “feminized”. That’s a rare feat as is in comedy at any time, but even more so in a year that features a big time comedy special called “From Bleak to Dark”.
Lucky for us all, Nick Youssef’s Take Care is streaming for your convenience, free of charge, on YouTube right here.