My Review of "Ali Wong: Don Wong"

Ali Wong: Don Wong is Ali Wong's latest 2022 stand-up special on Netflix. Her star is rising like crazy in the past few years. I remember seeing her special Ali Wong: Baby Cobra a while back. That stand-up special made me a fan of hers. Since then she's been doing everything. One of the biggest things she did was make the movie Always be my Maybe.

It's been a while since her Ali Wong: Baby Cobra so I kind of forgot her joke delivery style and I wasn't too sure how this special would be. She's done great so my hopes were high.

First off I already noticed her joke delivery style has changed. There is a much more confident aura around Ali this time around. She knows that her jokes will work and she pushes the punchline with facial expressions and pauses.

She starts off with some jokes about the double standards of successful men and successful women. There is much reality to the things that she's describing. We see a lot of these generalizations in the media with tons of stories about how successful men are able to obtain great women whereas it's the opposite way around for women. Her example is pretty funny too.

There are a lot of takes on the differences between the two genders and she gives us a bigger insight into the perspective of women. I can't relate as I've been a man all my life but I can still see the generalizations being true. The audience of her performance is a nice mix of men and women. All of them are able to understand and get much of the jokes. Some would think these female catered jokes wouldn't hit men the same way would be wrong. Ali's able to explain the situations well enough that there is universal humor to it.

Most of us have witnessed the experiences that Ali is talking about in her special. This was particularly great because Ali was diving deeper into a female's perspective in society and in the bedroom. It can get quite explicit but that's the exaggeration that makes the special so good. There aren't a lot of popular female comedians that are this raunchy in their jokes. It's a welcome change of pace.

With some of the discussions about the double standards between men and women she's able to explain some of the things we see today. For example why are men more likely than women to be stand-up comedians. In this case men are able to find great women a lot easier with comedy than the other way around.

I thought it was pretty hilarious that she uses some of the stereotyping of what women don't want into things that she actually wants personally. She's able to spin so much of our preconceived notions of what women want against us. Each time she catches us we laugh at ourselves because of our own ignorance and expectations.

The run time of this special is a full hour and there aren't many lulls between laughs. She's able to elaborate on certain jokes and not make the joke feel stale. It goes to show that she's practiced this set for a while and knows exactly how to deliver it.

Overall, I really liked this special. It's always great to hear more perspectives in comedy. You'd think that I wouldn't be able to understand some of the female centric jokes but it's quite the opposite. Ali's able to play on our expectations and turn us upside down. I have to give this special a 7.5 out of 10. This is a comedy special that I will be recommending to some of my friends.