Fun
Frisky
Nostalgic
Intense
Adventurous
Choked Up
Curious
Romantic
Weird
Even if you didn’t have HBO when you were growing up because your parents weren’t crazy about their children’s impressionable eyes viewing the increased sex and violence on premium cable (particularly if it meant paying extra), and they didn’t care whether all your friends had it and it made you look super lame to not have it, EVEN THEN, there was still Comedy Central. In the 1990s, Comedy Central showed MANY hours of stand-up comedy, and at least half of them were that Paula Poundstone special where she talks about Pop Tarts and that audience member whose mom tore her face open on a lube rack.
The grand majority of those stand-up specials were HBO Comedy Half-Hours. Sure they ended up edited for time and bleeped for language on Comedy Central, but they were what was available. One of the many fantastic things about the HBO Go era is their Comedy tab, where dozens of old stand-up specials are now available, and they are a superb choice for idle on-demand viewing. But which to choose? Obviously, skip past all the Bill Maher specials, and you’ve seen those Chris Rock specials before. How about supporting women for once? Huh? Did you ever consider that?
You can cultivate a pretty phenomenal all-women stand-up marathon from the HBO Go offerings. Allow us to help you get started.
HBO Comedy Half-Hour: Judy Gold
Judy Gold was all over the mid-’90s Comedy Central scene, and I’d forgotten how funny she was. The best part of Gold’s stand-up is how unapologetically big, brassy, and loud she is. There’s no attempt made to soften herself for her audience — in fact, she takes every opportunity to holler and honk and make her presence felt. It’s pretty exhilarating. The bit I have always remembered best was the answering-machine bit with her mother (“…so long.”), but her closing tour-de-force lip-synching “And I Am Telling You” (before, you know, everybody started doing that) is really something. [Watch on HBO Go.]
HBO Comedy Half-Hour: Janeane Garofalo
This might be my favorite piece of stand-up of all time. This is absolute peak Garofalo, right at her mid-’90s, post-Reality Bites peak when people were really catching on (though it’s also after her disastrous Saturday Night Live experience, so it’s safe to say not everyone was catching on). Every bit in this is killer, from German Kathleen Turner to getting mugged for her comedy notebook to her hatred for Big Fashion. Her repertoire of pop-cultural topics runs the mid-’90s gamut from Weezer to Hootie and the Blowfish to Supermarket Sweep to Speed, and all of them run through Garofalo’s withering sarcastic eye. There are no fewer than 20 references from this half-hour that I use to this day, and it would be nice if more people picked up on them, so please watch this now. [Watch on HBO Go.]
HBO Comedy Half-Hour: Margaret Cho
Margaret Cho gained the bulk of her cred as a stand-up from her I’m the One That I Want special, which detailed her getting put through the churning Hollywood machine while making her ill-fated ABC sitcom All-American Girl. This earlier special was made during the production run of that show, so there’s none of the darker edge (or at least not much; her story about “Wok on the Wild Side” certainly suggests the problems that would ensue) that would later earn her such acclaim. But what this half-hour gives up in gravitas, it earns back in a hilarious lineup of killer bits, including my all-time favorite joke about feathered hair, and you can take that to the bank. [Watch on HBO Go.]
Sarah Silverman: We Are Miracles
It’s not Jesus Is Magic, which is the ultimate Sarah Silverman stand-up experience, but We Are Miracles is no mere second-prize. Watching Silverman in this special really feels like looking into the mirror that looks back at you, with Silverman on more than one occasion inspecting the audience after punchlines, as fascinated with their response to her provoking, strange, deeply funny jokes as they are with her for saying them. [Watch on HBO Go.]
Wanda Sykes: I'ma Be Me
It sometimes drives me crazy that Wanda Sykes isn’t credited for being the superior stand-up comedian that she is. There are few people in this world who make me laugh more steadily and purely. Her bit on “Dignified Black People” from I’ma Be Me might be the best bit she’s ever done. The rest of this special charts Sykes’ personal evolution across the past decade that has been incredibly transformative for her career and life. The special is nothing short of a celebration, and it’s funny as hell. [Watch on HBO Go.]
Like what you see? Follow Decider on Facebook and Twitter to join the conversation, and sign up for our email newsletters to be the first to know about streaming movies and TV news!
