With all
my news satire shows on hiatus this week, it’s time for a standup special. As
I’ve said before, I’ve really come to enjoy Ronny as a Daily Show, and his performance as Eddie Cheng in Crazy Rich Asians only cemented that.
This is the first time I’ve seen him do standup, and I got a kick out of it.
Ronny’s
brand of withering rage from The Daily
Show is definitely present here, that exasperated sense of “God, these
people!” It gets directed at a wide variety of topics, from consumerism to
individual liberties to white people calling the cops on Black people for
innocuous things to planning three weddings for him and his wife. He also gives
his pitch for why America needs an Asian president.
The style
is a little rougher than his humor on The
Daily Show, but for the most part, I liked it a lot. I enjoy his views on
America as someone who didn’t grow up here, the land where we’re all “making it
rain” with the “50 napkins” you get with every takeout meal. Along with that,
he marvels at America’s notion of “everyone can make a difference” extending to
stuff like one person holding up an entire subway train based purely on their
belief that it will wait for them. I also love his comment that, in Chinese,
the name for America means “beautiful country” while the name for China means
“middle country” – “‘Middle country’?! That means nothing! […] We named this
place better than we named our own shit!”
There’s a
great bit comparing different state mottoes, based on the premise that
east-coast states have intense mottoes rooted in the American Revolution and
mottoes get more relaxed the further west you go. He wonders just how far people
in New Hampshire go to abide by “Live Free or Die,” and the plot twist of the
Texas state motto is terrific. (Like the audience, my guesses were wrong –
“Really, you’re gonna let the fucking foreigner teach you about your own
country??”)
Another
part I really like is his weary resentment for his wife’s friends asking him
about being a standup comedian. The device of using his flapping hand to
represent the other person talking is nothing revolutionary, of course, but I
love the way he uses it to have them eat his face while they talk, all while he
slowly dies inside. It’s a perfect representation for the feeling of being
trapped in a conversation you hate that you’ve had a million times.
But
everything comes to a head in the big finish, the tale of the three weddings.
Naturally, Ronny has no patience for their white friends’ dietary restrictions
(“spreadsheets of genetic
failures!!”), and the dramatic saga of him trying to get from New York to
Melbourne for the first wedding is hilarious. In addition to the overall
wildness of the story, he neatly weaves in references to number of bits from
earlier in the show, which really brings things home at the end.
Warnings
Lots of
swearing, references to violence (including parents beating children,) sexual
references, and thematic elements.
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