‘Jim Jefferies: Two Limb Policy’ Review – Jefferies Remains Impossible to Pin Down

Jim Jefferies occupies a great place in comedy these days. Having made his name as a — all together now — “controversial” comic back when such things were entirely commonplace, he didn’t pivot into I’m-better-than-that apologia the second it became trendy to cancel comics for doing their jobs. Instead, he just kept going, honing his craft and teasing out the boundaries of acceptability, so that now, in his fourth Netflix special, Two Limb Policy, it’s basically impossible to catch him out. He knows exactly when to deliver a nudge and a wink to the audience so everyone knows when he’s being ironic — even though it’s blatantly obvious anyway — and he’s such a seasoned writer at this point, he knows how to loop back around and make the risky stuff essential. There’s a truly chef’s-kiss Oscar Pistorius bit in this that illustrates my point pretty well.

In other words, Jim Jefferies doesn’t have to worry about being canceled. Not that any comedian should have to worry about this, of course, with the possible exception of the really rubbish ones who deserve it on the grounds of not being funny, but no cultural phenomenon has been more detrimental to comedy overall than the lingering fear of being fired for telling jokes. This is especially weird where Jefferies is concerned, since he has always been difficult to pin down politically. He has been lambasted for misogyny and criticisms of Millennials and cancel culture itself, but his most famous bit makes fun of America’s lax gun control laws, and he is pretty famously among the few people to get Jordan Peterson to admit he was wrong about something. Jefferies makes fun of everyone equally, calls out hypocrisy and ridiculousness wherever he can find it, and most importantly, trusts his audience to be in on the joke.

All of this is why Two Limb Policy works, just like High n’ Dry and Intolerant did. Everyone’s fair game, from Johnny Cash and actors in general — Jefferies believes it’s not a real profession, on the grounds that a ten-year-old has won an Oscar three times, which is pretty irrefutable — to asexuals trying to be a protected class and Ted Danson doing blackface (Jefferies is right when he quips that nobody’s life is not improved by Googling “Ted Danson blackface”. Lots of things haven’t aged well, but that hasn’t aged well the most.)

Jefferies is extremely good at introducing a premise that initially seems ridiculous, and then convincing the audience to begrudgingly admit he’s got a point. Johnny Cash being overrated seems like a bold claim, but he did only have a handful of songs that people know, and his biggest gigs were to prison audiences whose options were limited to either attendance or taking their chances back in their cells. It’s the same with the idea that being a comedian is a tougher job than being an award-winning actor — why else would they need a comedian to host the Academy Awards to make them entertaining?

Some stuff is just for fun, granted. There’s no deeper underlying point to Jefferies using “Hitler face” to get out of doing the school run, and the standout shocker gag when he calls AIDS “the original Ozempic” is one of those classic efforts to nudge a toe over the line of acceptability just for laughs. But a lot of Jefferies wrestling with legitimate social ideas, like the ambiguity of adding a nonspecific “+” to the end of LGBTQIA, or the difficulties of being heterosexual — it’s ironic, relax — have that characteristic “he’s right, you know” quality.

And even the more facile stuff generally has an amazing payoff. There’s a great bit about erectile dysfunction in older men being less a biological inevitability and more a consequence of them trying to get it up for older women that reveals itself as a political gag at the end, and the special’s title, Two Limb Policy, which refers to the system by which Jefferies determines whether someone in the audience is disabled enough to be allowed backstage to meet him, sets up a truly great callback.

Jim Jefferies is just a great comic, of that there can be little doubt. Two Limb Policy doesn’t contain any bits that’ll feature among his all-time-greats or achieve seismic virality, but it’s a consistently smart and funny hour, with a unique comic operating at close to the top of his game. Anyone who’s offended is almost certainly missing the point — then again, that’s true more often than not.