Netflix special Dirty Daddy is an earnest, heartfelt tribute to the Full House actor Bob Saget

The much-loved American stand-up comedian and actor Bob Saget died in January at age 65, hours after finishing a 2-hour standup set onstage at Ponta Vedra, Florida. Almost six months after his demise, Netflix has released a special called Dirty Daddy: The Bob Saget Tribute, wherein Saget’s friends and colleagues (actors, comics, musicians et al) gather, crack some jokes, sing a few songs and even shed the odd tear over the departed. The all-star lineup included comedians Jeff Ross, Jim Carrey, Chris Rock, Dave Chappelle and Tim Allen as well as musicians John Mayer and Jackson Browne — while Saget’s longtime friend and co-star on _Full House_, John Stamos, was the designated emcee for the night.

As the name suggests, Dirty Daddy (which was also the name of Saget’s memoir) plays on the central duality of Bob Saget’s career—his stand-up routines were marked by his brilliant usage of profanity and taboo subject matter, but his nationwide fame was on the back of his role as the genteel father from Full House. He really was America’s Dad to a whole generation, and Dirty Daddy: The Bob Saget Tribute delivers some brilliant riffs on this duality.        

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“Dick jokes and prayers,” said John Stamos when Bob Saget’s daughter Abby finished her heartfelt, Catholic-themed tribute to Saget, right after one of his friends had finished a dick joke that the late man had once performed onstage. Aubrey responded, “When you grow up with Bob Saget you can go one way or the other!” This really was a very funny, heartwarming moment.

Most comedians present were significantly funnier than they have been in years, to be honest. Here’s Jeff Ross, for example, hitting back at Jim Carrey after the latter made a very funny joke about Ross’s face: “You think I don’t know I look like if Amazon sold blown-up Jeff Bezos dolls? You think I like looking like Bruce Willis died hard?” Not that Carrey himself was any less brutally funny. Narrating a piece of advice Saget once gave him, Carrey said: “Young man, the storm may be brutal and the winters may be harsh but always remember: turn your wheels in the direction of the skid and you’ll be alright.”

Even when Carrey was being heartfelt, he made sure to end the earnestness with an absolute sucker-punch of a finishing line. Take this mini-speech for instance, which ends with a classic: “Bob wasn’t something that was taken away from us; he was something that was given to us. And one day when the laughs had hit a certain amount, he unzipped his human suit and went for a ride. He’s probably right there in the room with us, floating around with the angels. And those angels are saying, ‘You made people laugh. You made people feel loved. You made people money.’”

So funny was Carrey on the night, in fact, that the other comedians onstage were visibly having fun just watching the man—their own jokes be damned. At one point, Chris Rock said: “I think it’s sad that the motherfucker (Saget) had to die to get Jim Carrey back on stage. If this is the only way we’re going to see you perform I’m gonna kill Eddie Murphy next week.”

Dave Chappelle, meanwhile, was restrained and coherent and actually funny for once, just like the good old days before he started pandering to the anti-trans rhetoricians who are now seemingly his core audience. “Hello John Mayer, remember the time I tried to put mushrooms in your cappuccino machine and Bob was laughing at me? Your parties are never gonna be that good again!”  

Dirty Daddy: The Bob Saget Tribute also, crucially, invited many people onstage to talk about the young Bob Saget, the comedian’s formative years, his childhood struggles (Saget struggled with tragic losses throughout his life) and so on. It was reminiscent of reading Saget’s memoir where he spoke about how he and his Dad both had very similar styles of humour.  

“Like me, my dad dealt with death and all the hardships in life through humour. Sick and weird humour. We would be standing next to an ice machine and hear a cycle of ice drop with a loud thud, and he would say, ‘there’s your grandmother.’ As though her corpse wanted to say hello by dropping its two hundred pounds within earshot. Not always funny, but always some kind of metaphysical release from the pain.”

If Saget could have seen the outpouring of love and laughter that he brought about in Dirty Daddy: The Bob Saget Tribute he would have probably smiled and said something self-deprecating. This is a superb tribute to a fine comedian and by all accounts, a well-loved man and Netflix has done well to make it available for Saget fans everywhere.  

Dirty Daddy: The Bob Saget Tribute is available on Netflix  

Aditya Mani Jha is a Delhi-based independent writer and journalist, currently working on a book of essays on Indian comics and graphic novels.

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