The last time we saw comedian Whitney Cummings on Netflix, she was showing us a sex doll custom-made to look like her. How do you track it? Especially when we’ve endured a violent election cycle and a global pandemic in the meantime? Maybe all we need are jokes. just kidding This was also imagined by Cummings.
The essentials: You may know and recognize Cummings from his comedy work. In 2011, she scored a major coup by scoring sitcoms on two broadcast networks at once, starring in Whitney for NBC while co-creating 2 Broke Girls for CBS.
This is his fifth stand-up special and his second for Netflix. His previous four hours aired on Comedy Central in 2010 and 2014, then HBO in 2016 and Netflix in 2019. This time, he decided to self-finance his shoot in Newark, NJ, before selling it to Netflix for the its distribution. She too he told Variety that for this hour, he wanted to attract the widest possible audience. Which means: “more nostalgic and emotionally welcoming: no politics, no lectures, no self-indulgence.”
What comedy specials will it remind you of?: She’s observant and physical on stage, and she’s willing to confront her own emotional and psychological baggage as much as her peers or kids these days. You could try to rank her with the likes of Iliza Shlesinger or Amy Schumer, but Cummings remains single, for better or for worse. Or a bit like Michelle Wolf or Chelsea Handler, but not as political.
Memorable Jokes: Above, Cummings tells us what we’ve missed in the three years since his previous special, where he announced his engagement. now? “No, no, no.” And he’s not referring to Jordan Peele’s latest cinematic spectacle.
Cummings revels in depicting how her romantic and sexual entanglements have become trickier in her late 30s. She’ll show not only how she reacts to R. Kelly’s “Ignition (Remix),” but also how she can’t do a “reverse cowgirl” anymore.
In the second half of his new hour, Cummings revels in revisiting how his friends have become parents paranoid about their children’s privacy, wistfully comparing it to how parents of his generation allowed children to roam the malls for hours, stay out until dark and even break into bounce houses with abandon.
And his suitor somehow manages to find a surprising take on the “Aristocrats” joke format. I dare not say anything more.
Our take: Whitney Cummings contains crowd. Or for comedy purposes, contradictions.
Twerking to an R. Kelly song while joking about how we’re not supposed to listen to it anymore. Play a submissive role to trick your partner into massaging her. She tells us that she likes older men now and then reveals that her current boyfriend is nine years younger than her. Complaining about a sex position because it hurts your knees, but also demonstrating that position to the point where you admit it’s time to retire that joke too. But nothing quite sums up the modern mixed message of dating in a post-#MeToo world than Cummings telling her partner, “If I’m crying, it’s consensual. What’s the confusion?”
Except maybe when she suggests that men don’t bend the knee to propose because it’s a bad angle to see her neck, immediately panning to a camera angle where Cummings threatens the camera operator for doing exactly that as he watches this camera
As for their more nostalgic routines, there’s an inherent danger in becoming too hackneyed and laughable for recognition rather than for a special insight into how our lifestyles have changed over the years.
Cummings gets more mileage out of her own personal struggles with body issues and electronic privacy than she does from pointing out the dangers of traditional children’s play equipment. Because the first issue gives her greater authority and wisdom when she hears others complain that technology and social media have given us a generation of girls who are defined by their looks rather than their intelligence. To which Cummings can pause, hand to face as if holding back tears, only to retort, “But there’s also an epidemic of hot girls who think they’re smart.”
Our call: ISSUE IT Cummings knows his audience. If you’re ready to hear from the biggest millennial about how much has changed for kids and lovers, then this is right up your alley.
Sean L. McCarthy works the comedy beat for his own digital newspaper, The comic of the comic; before, for real newspapers. Based in New York, but will travel anywhere for the scoop: ice cream or news. He also tweets @thecomicscomic and podcasts of half-hour episodes featuring comics revealing origin stories: The comic’s comic features the latest stuff first.
Watch Whitney Cummings: Jokes on Netflix
