One year later, Chris Rock slapped back. Hard.

It was certainly not as startling as Will Smith hitting him at the Oscars, but his long-awaited response, in his new Netflix standup special Selective Outrage, had moments that felt as emotional, messy and fierce. It was the least rehearsed, most riveting material in an uneven hour.

Near the end, Rock even botched a key part of one joke, getting a title of a movie wrong. Normally, such an error would have been edited out, but since this was the first live global event in the history of Netflix, Rock could only stop, call attention to it and tell the joke again. It messed up his momentum, but the trade-off might have been worth it, since the flub added an electric spontaneity and unpredictability that was a drawing card.

At 58, Rock is one of our greatest standups, a perfectionist whose material, once it appeared in a special, always displayed a meticulous sense of control. He lost it here, purposely, flashing anger as he insulted Smith, offering a theory of the case of what really happened at the Academy Awards after he made a joke about Jada Pinkett Smith’s hair, and in what will be the most controversial part of the set, laid much of the blame on her. This felt like comedy as revenge. Rock said he long loved Will Smith. “And now,” he added, pausing before referencing the new movie in which Smith plays an enslaved man, “I watch Emancipation just to see him get whooped.”

One of the reasons Netflix remains the leading standup platform has been its ability to create attention-getting events. No other streamer comes close. Through a combination of razzle dazzle and Rolodex spinning, the streaming service packaged this special more like a major sporting event than a special, a star-studded warm-up act to the Oscars next week.

It began with an awkward preshow hosted by Ronny Chieng, who soldiered through by poking fun at the marketing around him. “We’re doing a comedy show on Saturday night – live,” he said, before sarcastically marvelling at this “revolutionary” innovation. An all-star team of comics (Ali Wong, Leslie Jones, Jerry Seinfeld), actors (Matthew McConaughey) and music stars (Paul McCartney, Ice-T) hyped up the proceedings, featuring enough earnest tributes for a lifetime achievement award. As if this weren’t enough puffery, Netflix had comedians Dana Carvey and David Spade host a panel of more celebrations posing as post-show analysis.

This was unnecessary, since Netflix already had our attention by having Rock signed to do a special right after he was on the receiving end of one of the most notorious bad reviews of a joke in the history of television. Countless people weighed in on the slap, most recently actor and comic Marlon Wayans, whose surprisingly empathetic new special, God Loves Me, is an entire hour about the incident from someone who knows all the participants. HBO Max releasing that in the last week was its own counter-programming.

Until now, Rock has said relatively little about the Oscars, telling a few jokes on tour, which invariably got reported in the press. I’m guessing part of the reason he wanted this special to air live was to hold onto an element of surprise. Rock famously said he always believed a special should be special. And he has done so in previous shows by moving his comedy in a more personal direction. Tamborine, an artful, intimate production shot at the BAM Harvey theatre, focused on his divorce. This one, shot in Baltimore, had a grander, more old-fashioned vibe, with reaction shots alternating with him pacing the stage in his signature commanding cadence.