Vinay Menon: Chris Rock needs to forget Will Smith and the slap for the sake of his comedy

Nearly a year after the slap heard ’round the world, Chris Rock is hitting back.

The comedian’s new special streamed live on the weekend, a first for Netflix. But since the special will be available for anyone to watch even in 2049, “livestreaming” was mostly a gimmicky stunt and needless tightrope for a standup to walk.

No matter. It’s been a year since Will Smith slow-rushed the stage at the Oscars to assault host Rock with a slap powerful enough to trigger a seismograph.

How Rock’s molars didn’t end up in the Pacific Ocean is a mystery.

This was one of the most shocking moments in the history of the Academy Awards.

In the aftermath, possibly because his cheek was too swollen to talk, Mr. Rock went radio silent. He dodged interview requests. If his pet goat asked about the incident, Rock would have used sign language to say he was not ready to open up.

That just changed with “Chris Rock: Selective Outrage.”

Netflix marketed this as a “live event” to simulate the thrill of a pay-per-view prize fight. This would be Rock shadowboxing the ghost of Oscars Smith, with words instead of fisticuffs. The rematch was in Baltimore’s Hippodrome Theatre even if Rock, garbed in foppish all-white, looked less street brawler and more South Beach baller.

And this is where expectation soon got sucker-punched.

I was hoping Rock would disembowel Smith with surgical precision. Instead, he was kind of slashing all over the place. Rock started the eight-minute bit, which came at the end of his one-hour set, by saying he refused to be a victim.

Then he very much sounded like a victim.

He stated the obvious. Getting slapped by “Suge Smith” hurt and “Summertime” is still ringing in his ears. He talked about the differences in their physical stature:

“Will Smith is significantly bigger than me. We are not the same size, OK? Will Smith does movies with his shirt off. You ain’t never see me do a movie with my shirt off. If I’m in a movie getting open heart surgery, I got on a sweater.”

Rock then pivoted to armchair psychotherapist and blamed the psychotic outburst on Jada Pinkett Smith, Will’s wife. As you recall, the slap happened after Rock made a joke about Jada’s hair. But to Rock, alopecia was the least of it. He believes Smith lurched into a rage due to a matrimonial “entanglement.”

As Rock put it: “His wife was having an affair with her son’s friend.

“She hurt him way more than he hurt me.”

I have no clue if this is right. What I do know is it’s time for Rock to move from Selective Outrage to Selective Amnesia. It’s time to forget Will Smith because this albatross around his neck is messing with his comedic stylings.

The world is understandably focused on the bit about the slap heard ’round the world. But it’s the preceding 52 minutes that should concern Rock. He spent the past year touring and test-driving material over more than 130 shows. But the end result this weekend does not match the atomic genius of previous HBO specials, including “Bring the Pain,” “Bigger and Blacker” and “Never Scared.”

Don’t get me wrong. Even if he’s operating at 40 per cent humour capacity, Rock is funnier than 60 per cent of comedians flying at 100 per cent. He’s rightfully earned a spot on any future list of the Top 10 Greatest Comics of All Time. With the possible exception of Dave Chappelle, nobody makes me laugh harder.

It’s not that “Selective Outrage” was a bomb. It was actually worse because it was perfectly fine and perfectly fine is just not good enough for a comedian as gifted as Mr. Rock. From the derivative bits on woke, race, wealth, gender, fatherhood and the changing nature of dating in middle age, it didn’t feel like exciting new content.

It felt like Rock was fishing around a recycling bin to repurpose greatest hits.

It felt like Chris Rock was doing a hack impersonation of Chris Rock.

I hate saying that. I love the man. But that slap has clearly bruised his creative noggin. So maybe this special, uneven as it was, can prove to be cathartic, an unburdening, a reawakening, a space-gun vaporization of the millstone around his neck.

Livestreaming his first special since the slap was a grave mistake. When expectations are this torqued, mulligans and multi-gig editing are your friends. There’s a reason Rock’s 2008 special, “Kill the Messenger,” was spliced together from concerts in Johannesburg, London and New York City. You achieve polish by picking from the best.

By contrast, Rock stumbled over his words on Saturday, prowled the stage with more manic energy than usual, overrelied upon his strophic style of repeating premises and twice botched a set-up that ruined a punch line.

His take on abortion got dangerously close to a Bill Burr bit.

Again, I will go to my grave as Team Rock. What happened to him at the Oscars was beyond appalling. And he handled it with grace and professionalism: “I took that hit like Pacquaio.”

Will Smith should not be forgiven for what he did.

But it is time for Chris Rock to forget and get back to just being funny.

You can’t break new ground until you bury the past.