‘Nikki Glaser: Bangin’ On Netflix: TMI, Or Are We All Too Prude?

Netflix viewers will recognize Nikki Glaser as one of the six comedians featured in the 2017 collection of half-hours called The Standups. But comedy fans know much more about Glaser than that from her appearances on recent Comedy Central roasts, her morning radio show on SiriusXM’s Comedy Central channel, and/or her 20-episode Comedy Central series from 2016, Not Safe With Nikki Glaser.

After this hour, Nikki Glaser: Bangin’ on Netflix, it’s quite possible there’s nothing left to know about the 35-year-old comedian. Or at least about her sex life.

Yes. You heard all of that correctly (with headphones on and captions off if you’re at work or otherwise in public).

Glaser opens with 15 minutes revealing how she learned about blow jobs (“I accepted it the same way I kind of accept death”) and how she chooses to participate in oral sex herself, before moving on to equally graphic descriptions about her vagina, masturbation habits, porn searches and current sexual preferences.

It’s not so much a TED Talk as, well, a SEX ED Talk. A DR. RUTH Talk? I suppose I should update that reference to Loveline to hit Glaser’s age group’s coming of age. Or just defer to Glaser’s own staging and call it a NIKKI, in honor of her name in lights behind her.

I’m of that age when Nikki meant Prince’s “Darling Nikki,” which came out the year Glaser was born.

But don’t try to make Glaser out to be some kind of sex fiend. Because men in stand-up comedy have made dick jokes since the very first open mic night. And Glaser’s making a shrewd point about “stumbling into feminism” without ever sounding the shrew, just by cataloging her own turn-ons and turn-offs.

She doesn’t reference Prince, but rather Malcolm Gladwell and his 10,000 hours, equating success at sex with success in any other field. “That’s how bad I want to be good,” she says, adding in a segue: “An innocuous compliment from a guy you like means everything.”

Which she then uses to cite her origin story as a stand-up comedian.

Glaser makes plenty more jokes at the expense of our own dichotomy when it comes to sex versus emotional communication, and how we can jump into bed or a sexual encounter much more easily than we can express any sort of intimate feelings for one another. Especially when alcohol is involved.

Glaser also points out how society, and pop culture via movies both pornographic and not, reinforce the notion that women have to satisfy their men, without hardly ever considering the same for women. At 35, Glaser claims she now knows her true worth and value and can bring that to a relationship. That is, if she even wants one any longer.

And if you are hoping to bed her, well, then, you’re just going to have to learn to suck it up, too.

She’s right. She has stumbled onto to a new form of feminism. Suck it up.

Sean L. McCarthy works the comedy beat for his own digital newspaper, The Comic’s Comic; before that, for actual newspapers. Based in NYC but will travel anywhere for the scoop: Ice cream or news. He also tweets @thecomicscomic and podcasts half-hour episodes with comedians revealing origin stories: The Comic’s Comic Presents Last Things First.

Watch Nikki Glaser: Bangin' on Netflix