Off With His Head is haunted by the New Yorker controversy.

It's been a year since The New Yorker's infamous exposé of Hasan Minhaj's “emotional truths” caused a stir on the Internet and beyond, bringing down a comedian who had until then enjoyed a nearly flawless reputation. Now Minhaj is back with his first comedy special since the storm subsided, a one-hour Netflix offering titled Get rid of his head. It's an apt, self-aware nod to the title, given the momentous nature of the New Yorker article – which exposed alleged fabrications in Minhaj's stand-up specials and rehashed allegations of a toxic work environment on his former show Patriot Act– ultimately for his career. Minhaj defended himself in a 21-minute YouTube response video, accusing the magazine of poorly wording its statements and lying, but Slate's own fact-checking concluded that Minhaj mostly just confirmed the article's information. The scandal proved to be a massive obstacle to Minhaj's career: The Returning King The comedian was reportedly set to be the next host of The Daily Show However, after Trevor Noah stepped down, he lost the role due to the hubbub. Fans, both despised and otherwise, waited with bated breath to see if he would return – but now that we're here with Minhaj's new material, I wonder if it's too late to put the cat back in the bag to stuff.

It hasn't even been 20 minutes yet Get rid of his head before Minhaj begins fact-checking and brings up the New Yorker article. In mentioning the elephant in the room, Minhaj jokes that he now has a “Controversies” tab on his Wikipedia page, but suppresses the audience’s cheers at this development, lamenting that it is “a stupid controversy”: “That I didn't fuck a porn star; I didn't cheat on any boy. I was caught embellishing for dramatic effect. The same crime your aunt committed on Thanksgiving.” After receiving passionate cheers for destroying the publication's perceived insult, he uses the anecdote to move on to a series of smaller setups. “If you want to call me a liar, you don’t have to fact-check my stand-up comedy,” Minhaj delivers. “I am a straight man. I lie all the time,” he adds, before joking about how he lies when asked at the CVS checkout to donate to the American Diabetes Association, saying he'll do it later. He then moves on to another joke – one of the few genuinely funny bits in the entire special – about his generation of men who are passionate about crypto, who “don't read podcasts but listen to them” and who text him constantly. Alpha male memes.” The point of the whole thing is a joke about the helicopter crash that killed Kobe Bryant, an event that, even four years after the famous basketball player's death, is still considered too soon.

When the New Yorker piece came out, the realization that Minhaj may have blurred the lines between his factual infotainment programs and his fictional stand-up specials sparked disapproval from, but also support from, Minhaj's dedicated fans, who felt misled Devoted fans who felt Minhaj had singled out the attempt to “lie” in his stand-up – a form known for enacting hyperbolic scenarios – was something of a witch hunt. The discourse was complex, touching not only on the scope for exaggeration in emotional storytelling, but also on race, gender, and hypocrisy, among other issues. The allegations were about something much deeper than exaggerating for the sake of fun: As Slate's Nitish Pahwa aptly wrote at the time, Minhaj's success rested on the idea that “the people he claimed to speak for were made to do so.” “To believe that it was really him.” did get it on a visceral, fundamental level.” Not to mention the allegations that the New Yorker article resurfaced and referred to female employees of Patriot Act He sued the show alleging discrimination, harassment and retaliation, a legal development that went largely unnoticed in Minhaj's public responses — and in his new special — the following year.

What's a public figure to do after a controversy like this? One way is to treat the whole thing as if it were much ado about nothing, a mountain out of a molehill. Judging by the rather casual manner in which Minhaj has spoken about the topic in interviews and in his new special, this appears to be his preferred approach. He seems to want us to believe that he thinks the scandal is too ridiculous to really care about. But this proposal is betrayed by one thing: the structure of Get rid of his head would mean he actually cares. What if the Returning King Who became that? King Jester doesn't actually want to be completely beheaded in the court of public opinion? What if, because of the revelation, Minhaj didn't dismiss everything as an unnecessary, insignificant coincidence that he didn't care about, but instead treated it as an invisible line that he couldn't cross again?

The thing is, this special isn't nearly as effective as Minhaj's previous ones. Not because Minhaj has lost his flair, but because it largely lacks the comedian's bread and butter: funny twists on incredibly personal stories. Instead, Get rid of his head is full of riffs on Indians in politics, the concept of “Beige-Istan”, generational differences and the fact that all arguments, from couples therapy disputes to World War III, boil down to an argument about “boundaries”. Some of it is funny, but much of it inspires no more than a modest laugh, a curt puff of air from the nose coupled with tense lips. The most hilarious moments in the special are the times when Minhaj is typically specific and vulnerable, like when he describes the moment he finally got a brown therapist or when he describes explaining Black Lives Matter to his immigrant father. And yes, it is incredibly clear how many of these anecdotes are “played up” for dramatic effect. Not quite as far-fetched as the false claim that your daughter was hospitalized for fear of anthrax poisoning, as the New Yorker profile reported – here the exaggerations seem harmless but meaningful; profound but not self-serious; political, as Minhaj's material always is, but not distant. Most importantly, it's funny, but the rest of the special struggles to rise above the bar.

This is how the New Yorker arrived at the supposed truth of Minhaj's storytelling, albeit by watching Get rid of his headI had to ask myself: at what price? Minhaj was once a comedian whose comedy was meaningful And hilarious whose work Patriot Act was urgently needed, and their stories in The King's Jester were deeply felt. Now we're just dealing with a comedian who's afraid of being funny and clearly paralyzed by the constraints of caring while pretending not dealing with everything that almost derailed his career. Would it really have been so bad to let him get away with alleged untruths? I'm joking, of course – since laughter is in short supply around these parts, someone did To.