After releasing six stand-up specials, a sketch series and a feature film with Netflix, Iliza Shlesinger has made the leap to Prime Video for her newest hour, which finds her reflecting on giving birth to her second child, and how she views feminism, comedy, and Gen Z differently now that she’s in her 40s. Her dog may literally be A Different Animal we see from her Netflix era, but how is her comedy different?
The Gist: With her first name spelled out in big letters behind her, her dog peering out from the hole in the A, and the comedian herself appearing first in profiled spotlight in one of the other letters, Shlesinger filmed her newest stand-up hour at the Eccles Theater in Salt Lake City.
In addition to her stand-up, you may have seen Shlesinger in several recent movies, co-starring in Netflix’s Spenser Confidential, and having supporting roles in Instant Family and Pieces of a Woman. She also starred in the 2021 Netflix movie she wrote for herself, Good On Paper, based on her own dating experiences.
Her real life has changed a lot since then. She notes that her second child, a son, was eight months old when she filmed this.
And so, after the “requisite pregnancy portion” of her routine, she also finds time to talk about the realities of shower sex; how Millennials aren’t that different from Gen Z, even if the plight of women remains the same; and what it means to have the “perfect amount of chest hair.”
What Comedy Specials Will It Remind You Of?: Rosebud Baker also recently tackled new motherhood issues on Netflix in her special The Mother Lode, but Baker’s comedy has a slightly darker edge. There are far more reformed “party goblin” women in stand-up these days (example: Hannah Berner) and they’ve all been influenced in one way or another by Shlesinger.
Memorable Jokes: Shlesinger makes fun of her male peers in podcasting who somehow don’t think of women as actual huiman beings with equal rights until they themselves become fathers to daughters. For her own part, Shlesinger claims she won’t be like other comedians who make fun of their children by telling embarrassing stories about them. After all, those kids of stand-ups wind up having complete strangers reminding them of those stories for years afterward. “I don’t want to tell people things about her,” she says of her daughter, then aged two-and-a-half. So she doesn’t even share photos of her kids online. But to perhaps prove her point, she does tell a couple of jokes about her toddler girl’s bathroom habits?!
Instead, Shlesinger makes herself the bigger target, realizing that her relentless pursuit of affection from her children may come across “the same way the creepy guy in your office seeks affection from women.”
She does get in another dig at creeps, bros, and creepy bros who might not believe her when she describes how a woman’s brain and thought process changes once she has given birth. “There’s no way, we better ask Joe Rogan,” she imagines them saying.
And then again, she turns the lens back on her, reflecting on how and why she laughed when her husband dropped the soap while they showered together. The idea of men trying to have sex with their wives/girlfriends in the shower may be a logistical nightmare and a bit of a hack premise, but even Shlesinger knows the “drop the soap” premise is beyond defending. “As a comic I know better. (And yet) I laughed so f—ing hard,” she reveals, before adding her two cents on the bit, calling it “the last remaining vestige of homophobic comedy that we as a nation have just decided we’re gonna keep.”
Some other outdates societal ideas, on the other hand, need to go. She suggests blaming the patriarchy for women’s general problems doesn’t go far enough, as she blames the entire world and the Internet and women for allowing themselves to keep pressuring one another into unrealistic beauty and lifestyle standards. Now in her 40s, she wishes she understood in her 20s that the men her age cared so little about vanity and looks compared to the peer pressure she felt then.
She punctuates this whole chunk with a zinger about just how men’s standards can be, and pauses to explain that she had written her example a full year before the Internet collectively roasted soon-to-be Vice President J.D. Vance with a sofa cushion or two, or two million.
Our Take: In a very literal sense, the canine sidekick we see now joining Shlesinger onstage is different, Tian Fu coming to (and from) the rescue five years ago, after her longtime pet, Blanche, had died.
In another sense, Shlesinger’s comedy continues to bang the drum for wanting us to understand just how women her age are forced (or force each other) to play by rougher rules and standards than their male counterparts.
But after surveying the demographic age range of her audience in Salt Lake City for her taping, she stresses that the differences aren’t quite so profound between the two youngest generations of adults. In broadening her appeal to younger Gen Z fans, she claims that their problems were not of her generation’s making. “We did not create this mess of a society. Millennials did not start this fire,” she says, arguing instead that “we laid the groundwork for everything that made you you.” And by groundwork, she explicitly means grabbing the reins of social media platforms, from MySpace through Vine to TikTok. “We are just as angry as you are but our backs hurt, and we have heartburn.”
But she also explains: “You need to know a little bit about the generation that came before.”
And in that sense, we don’t quite learn as much about how the feminists and comedians of the Baby Boom or Gen X may have influenced or shaped Shlesinger’s comedic philosophy. Is that asking too much for her to divulge? Then again, as anyone older could probably tell you, it’s all too common for “kids these days” of any age to feel like they’re the true pioneers.
Picking Utah for her audience and backdrop certainly adds something special, too, as Shlesinger pauses from time to time, reflecting on how much more punch her lines about culture and men resonate more in a state still dominated by one religion.
No matter what, she’s still got your attention. And she doesn’t even have to be creepy about it.
Our Call: STREAM IT. Shlesinger has long been a fan of coming up with her own phrasing to describe her peer group. In this hour, she flips the script on the vanity of women by noting that once a woman feels safe with a man, she no longer seeks external validation. She feels almost precocious spelling out the difference between performing for the “male gaze” vs. the male gays. But she’s more precise and powerful when she’s noticing how civil rights have come under fire “while we were obsessed with bullshit.”
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.
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