Yearly Departed

Yearly Departed doesn’t necessarily strike comedy gold, but it makes the process of complaining about and bidding goodbye to a particularly tough year a little more tolerable.

The novelty of the approach here is worth a viewing, and they do sneak a STREAM IT for me just for keeping me intrigued as to what they were going do to next. It didn’t make me want to stop watching after 20 minutes like Death to 2020 did.

To start with, “Yearly Departed” needs more edge, a little more slack, and way more chaos to make for a memorable goodbye to 2020, let alone a fitting one. What’s here is too polished to befit the last 12 volatile months, and keeping the performers separate eliminates any chance of them building off each other’s sets.

Like the year 2020 itself, this special starts out pretty great. Then it goes a little wobbly. And then it collapses and has to be rushed to the ER … only to find that the ER is full and there’s nothing that can be done to save the patient. ... I did tune in thinking that maybe I could laugh 2020 out of the room and out of my life. But I couldn’t.