My Review of "Sheng Wang: Sweet and Juicy"

Sheng Wang: Sweet and Juicy is one of many Netflix comedy specials to have come out in 2022. I wasn't too sure about this one because I haven't heard of him before. This one is endorsed by Ali Wong so it can't be too bad right? I know I'm a fan of her so her sense of humor so if she says it's good I'll watch it.

The show is definitely not what I was expecting. Ali's shows are pretty raunchy at points but they do point out her Asian differences in her show. Sheng isn't quite focusing on his Asian heritage as much. He does touch upon it but it isn't the prime focus of his act.

His act is surprisingly clean. It's kind of a nice little departure with most comedians liberally using profanity to aid the delivery of their punchlines. All of his stuff is pretty darn clean and his delivery has an awkward dryness that you start to understand after a few minutes. Think of a Mitch Hedberg kind of dry delivery and you kind of understand where Sheng is coming from.

Sheng doesn't really have one liners though. All of his jokes are derived from anecdotal things that he finds in his everyday life. He's able to find the joys and hilarity in everyday small things like applying lotion and buying things differently as an adult. They're really small observations that he's able to exacerbate into a rich understanding of how much more there is to mundane situations.

Sometimes I want to live my life to be able to see all of these interesting things when my life gets boring. Listening to Sheng gives me a new perspective in life and makes me want to open up my understanding of my surroundings. They're hilarious and very innocent. That's a pretty tough direction to go into when you're a grown adult. Still he makes it work in a very fluid manner.

I thought there were times when he could have used a few pauses to let some of the laughs settle before he goes into his next jokes. Overall the pacing was well done. He has good timing and the dry delivery does get funnier as the show goes on. I started to get the comedy special and understood his sense of humor and it didn't take long. Sheng also uses the inflection of his voice to point out where the punchline of the joke is. It kind of helps him out with some of the jokes.

His situational jokes are pretty funny. I think those jokes could work very well in some sort of sitcom if he wanted to sell them to a TV show or something. He seems like a guy that a network would hire to star in a new sitcom TV show. I'm just not sure if his personality is outgoing enough to market onto a major network as a star. Then again I have seen TV networks try this in the past.

Although he puts on this dry persona, I'm not quite sure if it is an onstage persona or if he's like that in real life. It seems like it could go either way. I'm intrigued by the way he thinks and that's what kept me wanting to know what his next jokes were going to be.

Overall, this was a lot more entertaining than I had expected. I think this is a comedy special that can be enjoyed by all. Sheng is able to make the most mundane things into comedy gold. I wish I could do the same. This is something that you could watch with the whole family. I have to give this comedy special an 8 out of 10. I will definitely be suggesting this to a lot of my friends.