Vir Das Landing is a funny and light-hearted reality how. Vir Das has continued to prove that he’s at his earnest best just not while he brings the laughter, but when it stops. He admits, he may not always make you laugh, but he sure can make you think and feel.

The stand-up special is definitely one the pleasant and breezy as it is, the majority of the hour-long Landing is an uneven ride.

As we have come to the end of 2022, Vir Das’s stand-up special drops on Netflix. The title Landing marks the comedian’s fifth on the global streaming platform.

The landing was filmed in a large theatre in New York, which says a lot about how far Vir has come as India’s most popular comedy export. It made me think back to his first Netflix special, Abroad Understanding, which intercuts between a small New York comedy club and Delhi’s Indira Gandhi Stadium.

The Landing starts with a barrage of bits to warm up the audience, which suggests this time the personal and perspective may well take a backseat to try to make us laugh. It can feel it in the editing too, with constant cutting that doesn’t allow the moment to play out and just be

The show has also boosted the expectation as Vir, things get real. Landing is bookended with the tale of his unnerving Air India flight from Newyork to Mumbai, where he is convinced to be arrested as soon as he lands.

The majority of the time it is an uneven ride, where Vir’s brand of funny and feeling seem out of sync with each other. The landing show boosts up the excitement of Vir, wit, and charm and feels low on the disarmingly moving storytelling and vulnerability we’ve come to associate with him.

In this, you can get a number of classic Vir Das bits that soar, with a bit about why the microphone is one of the single most influential inventions of all time, and how it can, and does. There will be one thing it can transform the world for better or worse, every day. Similarly, his takedown of the NRI mentality. “Conservative India lives abroad,” he says to an Indian-American audience member, adding, “Your parents’ version of India doesn’t exist… never lecture us from abroad about what it means to be Indian”. Vir’s specials have always got a huge response in his ongoing examination which means to be Indian and the idea of India, from within and overseas.

At the last and final touch of Landing, the special becomes alive and real, deeply drawing a portrait of an artist, who sincerely believed it was all over for him. An artist speaking to the audience he thought he’d never see again and perform for. “I never thought I’d see you again… If I’ve ever created a world, where I don’t get to touch a microphone, I have zero interest in that world,” he says.

Vir Das remains an artist and comedian I will keep coming back to, not because of how he makes me laugh, but because of how he breaks my heart in the most rewarding way.