Theo Von's New Netflix Special Is Called I'm Doing Fine. The Last One Never Made It Out
His third special, and first in five years, lands Oct. 20. A 2025 taping went so rough he discussed it on his own podcast.
By the Heckle Desk · · 2 min read
Netflix announced on Monday that Theo Von's new stand-up special, I'm Doing Fine, comes out Oct. 20. It's his third with the company, after No Offense in 2016 and Regular People in 2021, and his first in five years. In comedy, five years between specials is a long time. In podcasting, it's about four thousand episodes.
The title, as Variety pointed out, seems to tip its hat to the last attempt. In September 2025 Von taped a special at the Beacon Theatre in New York, and attendees took to social media to say it hadn't gone well. Von, to his credit, didn't hide from it. On his podcast he said he'd been off that night and had trouble remembering some of his material, and he talked about maybe shooting it again. That special never came out. This one, directed by Kevin Morra, is the one that did.
There's something almost noble in a man naming his comeback I'm Doing Fine. It's what everybody says at a funeral, and what every man says to his doctor right before the doctor says something else. It's a phrase built to end a conversation, and here he is, putting it on a marquee.
Of course Von isn't just a comic anymore. He's the host of This Past Weekend, which Spotify named its fourth-biggest podcast in the world in 2024. That's bigger than most religions manage, and the sermons are longer. That's the strange thing about the podcast era: the guys who used to play clubs now have more pull than the people who run the clubs, and some days more pull than the people who run the country. The stand-up special has become the thing they do to remind everybody they were comedians first.
The clip Netflix released features a hometown story involving, I'm told, a 30-pound bag of hamster bones, which tells me the Louisiana material is intact and that he hasn't been ruined by power. That's encouraging. Rich men usually start their specials talking about their houses.
Whether it's any good, we'll know on the 20th. But the old rule for performers still holds. You can bomb in New York, and they'll talk about it for a month. You just have to come back and kill somewhere, and then they'll talk about that for a year.