Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Nimesh Patel: Buy The Dip’ On Netflix, Where The Comedian’s Second Effort On His Debut Is The Charm?

Nimesh Patel initially was scheduled to make his Netflix comedy special debut on April 1, 2025, but his “Instant Karma” hour became a sort of April Fool’s misdirect, as Netflix shelved that project and instead ordered a new special from Patel, which he filmed this April in Washington, D.C. What do we get for waiting a year and a half for Patel’s debut? Perhaps something more timely and topical? Is his karma better for the wait?

NIMESH PATEL: BUY THE DIP: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT? 

The Gist: Nimesh Patel came up in the NYC comedy scene with Michael Che, co-hosting a weekly stand-up showcase in Brooklyn in the early 2010s. That’s where Chris Rock spotted Patel’s potential and tapped him to write for the Academy Awards a decade ago. Through Che, Patel also get hired as a writer for Saturday Night Live.

You may have seen Patel telling jokes on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, or more recently on CNN’s Have I Got News For You. And you may have seen him in viral clips or headlines making news when his jokes upset a Columbia University student group back in 2018.

He has released multiple stand-up specials on YouTube. Among them: 2022’s Thank You China, which has racked up 2.8 million views; 2023’s Lucky Lefty, and last year’s No Pork Halal Chinese Food.

Netflix

Memorable Jokes: “If you don’t drink, how do you read the news?” he jokes.

In Patel’s family, he might not have to read the news, as his family’s WhatsApp is always active. He jokes about how his mom sends a video every day to the group chat to remind them of her importance, and that his dad shows no emotions in real life but has room to use all of the emojis in chat, including a thumb’s up for every one of mom’s videos.

He jokes about becoming a father, and while you think he’s going to swerve one way with jokes about raising his daughter as trans, he really just dreamed of a son who might someday become the first Indian NBA star. And he’s more realistically concerned with actual hate for the health-care system, and specifically his wife’s anesthesiologist who sported a Rolex and Louis Vuitton slippers to the birthing room. “Do not flex in the hospital. We don’t want to see our insurance payment on your wrist, OK?” He deftly uses this to pivot to some jokes about Luigi Mangione.

There are other Patels to be joked about, too. There’s the guy (no relation) who got arrested “catching” a white toddler at Walmart, accused of kidnapping, and retaliated after his time in jail by suing for $25 million. And then there’s the most famous or infamous Patel (Kash, FBI Director), for whom the comedian shows no love or mercy.

In fact, he cannot get over how everyone in America seems okay with so much corruption, and both laughs at and shows empathy for the professional experts still working in government who have to report to the likes of RFK Jr. or Linda McMahon. But that’s nothing compared to dealing with the reputational fallout of Indian-Americans such as Second Lady Usha Vance or FBI Director Kash Patel. Nimesh Patel quips that Usha Vance made her own decisions, so don’t feel bad for her. “Don’t save her. She don’t want to be saved. I might however do eight minutes on Kash Patel,” whom the comedian zings as: “the last Indian director of the FBI” who won his job by somehow writing a children’s book about Russiagate where he plays sidekick to Trump.

But in the end, Nimesh brings it back around to his own family of Patels, and how they’ve never shied away from their culture or heritage, whether it’s raising Nimseh to revere a Bollywood classic, or teaching the kitchen staff on a major cruise ship how to cook a very Indian dish.

Our Take: Patel can come across as a laid-back troller, which only goes to show how shrewd he is in his joke-telling.

Right at the top of the show, he lets the audience know that the last time he played D.C. just happened to be the day Donald Trump was shot in 2024, and with the audience’s phones all locked up, it was left to him to break the news to them. “I’m just trying to recapture that magic,” he smirked, adding a bit later: “Everyone’s looking for hope, you know?”

Even the title of his special comes from a cheeky bit, in which Patel wonders what religion, if any, to raise his kids. Despite having a Jewish wife, he jokes he’s not “buying the dip” on Judaism, making sure to mention that he recognizes the difference between the religion and the national government of Israel. But then he continues, noting that his wife “never once has she cut off my food supply.” He then doubles down, suggesting that the audience should tune in to Netflix to see if that joke made the cut. If not, he jokes: “A shareholder made a phone call, and then I had to put my special out on Yom Kippur, OK?” Um, wow.

Our Call: Patel was only off by a few hours, as Yom Kippur ended at sundown Monday. Coincidence, or is he just that shrewd? Either way, STREAM IT.

Sean L. McCarthy works the comedy beat. He also podcasts half-hour episodes with comedians revealing origin stories: The Comic’s Comic Presents Last Things First.