For the entirety of Where Was I, Trevor Noah is comfortably in his pocket—speaking to an audience that's clearly familiar with his style and his views (if the respectful silences and occasional cheering are any indication) and branching off into sharing more serious facts between the jokes. And Noah's style is clearly refined, as he speaks clearly and sticks to a coherent structure at all times. But at a certain point his level of comfort here also leads to punchlines that are too easy or unsurprising, with too much focus placed on the kinds of voices and accents he can put on rather than the content of what he's saying. Noah remains a strong entertainer, but when you know how scathing he can get, this feels more like a warmup round.

Whether accidental or deliberate, early sections where Noah talks about the importance of facing the darkness of one's past—instead of trying to deny it and sweep it under the rug—can't help but take on greater resonance with genocides happening in the world today. For the purposes of Noah's narrative during the stand-up special, he only really talks about Germany. But there's still an uneasy truth in those details: about how ordinary people from any country today might feel just as guilty in retrospect about the cruelty happening right under their noses. Noah speaks in past tense with regards to Germany, but clearly speaks in present tense for America and the rest of the world.