Essay 712

From the latest issue of Newsweek…

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Chappelle: A Dozen Skits, a Million Questions

On July 9, Comedy Central will air what it’s calling “Chappelle’s Show: The Lost Episodes,” but that must be a typo. These are really the last episodes, as in the dozen skits Dave Chappelle had filmed before he went crazy or to Africa or wherever he went after he walked away from his $55 million (or so) contract. Chappelle himself had nothing to do with this salvage job; in fact, the two blues guys who croon the “Chappelle’s Show” theme stop, hilariously, and say: “I don’t think he’s comin’.” “When each sketch is over, I still expect to see Dave come running out,” says “Chappelle’s Show” co-creator Neal Brennan, who packaged these three shows. “You still kind of hope it’s a joke and he’s not really gone.”

The sketches themselves are just as topical and subversive as ever. There’s one where Dave is at a party dancing to posthumous Tupac music that’s suspiciously prescient. Another features Chappelle as the host of “Hip Hop Newsbreak” in the kind of extreme whiteface no one else would dare. But the most interesting pieces feature Chappelle as himself, including one where various people grossly overcharge him now that he’s a millionaire and another where he exacts revenge on people who didn’t take him seriously before he hit it big. Only Chappelle knows exactly why he left the show, but his own fame was clearly heavy on his mind.

—Marc Peyser