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Remember when Will Smith<\/strong> went nuts and whapped Chris Rock<\/strong> across the face in the middle of the Oscars? It was no dream! Netflix did everything they could on Saturday night to make no one will ever forget, and deployed some bleeding edge streaming technology (we call it \u201clive television,\u201d producers said to a hushed boardroom) to ensure Rock\u2019s newest special, Selective Outrage<\/em><\/a>, had maximum impact.\u00a0<\/p>\n The show was Netflix\u2019s first live broadcast play (and remains viewable on the platform for those who missed it) and was perfectly timed\u2014one week before the next Academy Awards ceremony, in which the only thing more guaranteed than Ke Huy Quan<\/strong> winning for Best Supporting Actor is host Jimmy Kimmel<\/strong> making some kind of crack about \u201cThe Slap.\u201d Rock saved nearly all his Will Smith-related gags until the very end, surely keeping engagement levels in the stratosphere. Paramedics were dispatched to Netflix\u2019s main offices after execs collided with one another from all the cartwheels they were doing.\u00a0<\/p>\n While Rock has been workshopping some of this material on the road since last year (the line \u201canyone who says words hurt has never been punched in the face\u201d brought the house down at the Madison Square Garden comedy summit with Rock, Kevin Hart<\/strong>, and Dave Chappelle<\/strong> last August<\/a>), Netflix\u2019s stream from Baltimore\u2019s Hippodrome Theatre was the first time a mass audience got to hear his uncensored thoughts.\u00a0<\/p>\n As V.F.<\/em> reported, the set<\/a> dug in quite extensively. Rock discussed how the incident has irrevocably changed his opinion on Smith\u2019s work (\u201cNow I watch Emancipation<\/em> just to see him get whooped. Got me rooting for massa. Hit him again, massa. Hit him again. You missed a spot,\u201d) and how pitting the guy who played Muhammad Ali in a movie against \u201cPookie from New Jack City<\/em>\u201d is not a fair fight. \u201cWill Smith does movies with his shirt off,\u201d Rock joked. \u201cYou never seen me do a move with my shirt off. If I\u2019m in a movie getting open heart surgery, I have on a sweater.\u201d<\/p>\n Most controversially, however, was Rock getting into Smith\u2019s private life, and his relationship with his wife, Jada Pinkett Smith<\/strong>. His thesis (and, indeed, the title of the special) was that Smith was engaging in selective outrage, and taking out his anger at being cuckolded on one person: Chris Rock. (And he used some very vituperative words<\/a> to expand on this, which we\u2019re not going to get into here.)<\/p>\n So what\u2019s the Sunday morning reaction like?<\/p>\n Many felt it was a slam dunk<\/a>. Others said they got off the Rock train a long time ago<\/a>. And a great many people felt that, perhaps, Rock went a little overboard with his rhetorical flourish of using the term \u201cbitch\u201d again and again. (It built up to a specific joke, but it did, indeed, go on<\/a> for some time!)\u00a0<\/p>\n USA Today<\/em> went so far as to call the set<\/a> \u201cold man yelling at clouds,\u201d an old Simpsons<\/em> gag. \u201cIf he is going to joke about Jada Pinkett\u00a0Smith and extensively address the Oscars slap, the punchline has to be better than calling her a gendered slur over and over again,\u201d the outlet wrote.\u00a0<\/p>\n Rock\u2019s final line of the show (indeed, he ended with a mic drop\u2014nay, a mic hurl<\/em>) was explaining why he didn\u2019t fight back. \u201cBecause I got parents, that\u2019s why,\u201d he said. \u201cYou know what my parents taught me? Don\u2019t fight in front of white people.\u201d<\/p>\n Here are just a few of the social media reactions related to those two controversial moments in the show.\u00a0<\/p>\n This content can also be viewed on the site it originates<\/a> from.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\nTwitter content<\/h4>\n