Ali Wong: Hard Knock Wife (2018)

Another week with no News Satire Roundup, so we’re back to a standup special. I loved Ali Wong’s Baby Cobra, and Hard Knock Wife is just good. Funny, filthy, and outrageous!

As with Baby Cobra, Wong performs her set while heavily pregnant. This time around, though, she’s on her second child, meaning she’s already had one baby and so is brimming with material on childbirth and being a new parent. She launches eagerly into the full body horror of labor, postpartum diapers, and breastfeeding. She explains that, during a C-section, the doctors put up a curtain so a wife’s husband can only see the “human” half of her and not the “cadaver” side, and she likens her questionable ability to get her baby to latch to parallel parking. She warns of the dangers of laughing after giving birth, which risks “the carne asada falling out of the taco.”

She’s solemn-faced as she discusses the sobering 8-and-a-half weeks she spent as a stay-at-home mom, which she describes as a “whack-ass job.” She’s now friends with the sort of moms she used to make fun of, since being a new mom is “like The Walking Dead,” where you latch onto whatever crew you can find, and she’s figured out why new moms wear such loud, bright patterns: “to replace the light that has died inside you.” She seethes with rage at how low the bar is for dads compared to moms, glowering at the thought of the “confetti cannon” her husband receives for occasionally changing diapers. Throughout, she punctuates her points with, “This is why we need maternity leave!”

While the special is frontloaded with childbirth and new-mom content, and both topics feature prominently throughout, Wong hits a variety of other topics as well. I like the section where she talks about her post-Baby Cobra fame and how it has and hasn’t changed her, especially her difficulties haggling over Craig’s List purchases now that she’s famous and can afford a $20 bike helmet! She also discusses making more money than her husband, stupid questions she gets asks as a comedian who’s female/Asian American/a mom, and why she’ll never be someone who ditches their spouse after they get famous to “trade up” for a much younger model, which leads into a great bit about receiving oral sex.

Through it all, Wong is emphatically dirty and incredibly upfront, telling us the truth as if she’s daring us not to believe it. This is a fantastically-funny special, and it offers up the added bonus of reinforcing my resolution to never bear a children because my god. Wow.

Warnings

Tons of language, graphic sexual references, gross-out humor, unnerving mental images, and thematic elements.