Dino Archie just dropped a full comedy special. 

You don’t need a subscription to watch it. You don’t need to rent it, or buy it, or illegally download it. It’s on YouTube. For free. Just sitting there. 

The Vancouver comedian posted the one hour and two minute TOXIC BUT SAFE special to his YouTube channel on April 19, as a professionally filmed and edited showcase of a performance he did last year at the Hollywood Theatre. 

“So in Vancouver, you're not in LA, you're not in New York, but we all have YouTube,”  Archie says in a phone interview with the Straight. “And that's where the best content is coming—at least my favourite specials have been dropped that way.”

So instead of waiting for someone else to give him the greenlight, Archie decided last September to rent the Hollywood Theatre, get a friend to DJ, another to film, and then put a special together to capture one show, one night, and one sold-out crowd. 

“I just wanted it to feel like a real comedy show that you go to. I think that's what's different about the other specials that I've seen that I liked, [because most specials] always seemed so polished, and so scripted.”

And Archie doesn’t hold back during the hour-long stand-up routine. He starts off speaking to some local issues that Vancouverites love to hate (racist crows, the banishment of plastic bags, homelessness, to name just a few) before launching into some of the world’s bigger issues. 

TOXIC BUT SAFE isn’t just the name of the show; it’s also something of a forewarning. 

“[I want to] kind of dance on that line of seeing what really bakes people's beans; are people really as offended in real life as they are online?” says Archie. He notes that some of the topics he gets into in the special—like gun control, abortion, toxic masculinity—often require a certain finesse to deliver to a diverse crowd like Vancouver’s, but that that’s what makes for good comedy. 

“We're not gonna solve anything in a real way, but we can laugh at the times. You get somebody with blue hair who wants to defund the police, and then you get a conservative over here, but if you're making them both laugh at that same issue, that's my favourite kind of comedy; something that doesn't just cater or pander to one demographic, or one kind of mindset. That's my favourite stuff.”

Since posting the special, Archie notes that it has been encouraging to see the response from fellow comics in the comments, and he hopes that it might inspire other artists to “do their thing, not have to wait for someone, to keep trying to get better at their craft, and then put it out there,” he says. 

“We don’t need those gatekeepers.” 

Dino Archie’s TOXIC BUT SAFE can be found on YouTube. Check out the comedian’s Instagram here and his website here.