Review: Jeff Dunham’s Scrooged-Up Holiday Special

I’ve never even heard of a stand-up comic having TWO stand-up comedy specials debuting in the same calendar year for two different networks. After wrapping up a three-special contract with Comedy Central earlier this year with the special Jeff Dunham: I’m With Cupid, Jeff is back at it, this time with Prime Video for a holiday special called Jeff Dunham’s Scrooged-Up Holiday Special. This one comes with a twist, instead of doing just a plain old Christmas-themed special like he’s done in years past, Jeff says this one is more like an audition for his cast of characters to one day do a rendition of Charles Dickens’ classic novel A Christmas Carol. 

This special actually adds a couple of new characters to the cast that may or may not be product placements and even throws in some newer form ventriloquist tricks not unlike what you would see from Paul Zerdin or Nina Conti. Some of these characters, like Little Jeff and Peanut, are available to buy on Amazon so doing a Prime Video special with characters that are available to buy in the store seems like a wise business move and in both bits offered hilarious takes. Little Jeff is actually presented a bit differently this time around, instead of being Peanut’s puppeted character, he becomes an original character with his own act.  And while some could say this voice might be a bit close to Walter’s voice and even shares a few of the cranky characteristics, the point of this portion is to remind everyone that Little Jeff makes a swell holiday present.

The other holiday offering is that of Peanut who now has a slightly smaller Peanut, that works more like a Jose Jalapeno than a Peanut, but this act was one of the funnier acts of the evening that saw chaotic bickering that seemed to dart from all sides. Last, but not least, Achmed closes the show which is where you’ll see some of the newer ventriloquist tricks I mentioned earlier and they work really well. That said, nothing’s funnier than when Achmed falls apart during the show which I can’t tell is part of the act or not because sometimes this happens and sometimes it doesn’t and when it DOES happen it’s one of the funniest bits in Jeff’s repertoire because the dialogue doesn’t seem scripted and when Jeff goes unscripted that’s when he really shines as a comic.

One big thing I’m not crazy about is the fact that Jeff Dunham’s Scrooged-Up Holiday Special is that it IS a censored special featuring bleeped out crass language that makes me wonder what the hell is this special doing on Prime Video. Like, if I wanted to watch censored Jeff Dunham I’d go on one of the AVOD sites and watch some of his older Comedy Central specials, not on an almost $9 a month service like Prime Video that also features ads. Having a censored special on a paid-for streaming service is like watching Goodfellas on TBS, it doesn’t make sense and I get increasingly annoyed as time goes on.

Other than that, Jeff Dunham’s Scrooged-Up Holiday Special is a solid Jeff Dunham special that starts off a bit slow in the jokes department but finishes with a big bang…literally.