Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Sheng Wang: Sweet & Juicy’ On Netflix, A Laid-Back Comedian Leans Into His Moment In The Spotlight

Ali Wong hopes to do for Sheng Wang what Netflix did for her: make him a stand-up star. Wong not only makes her directorial debut, but also shows up onstage to introduce Wang for his first hour special, calling him “one of my best friends and one of my favorite comedians in the entire world.” His debut is a long time coming. Worth the wait?

SHENG WANG: SWEET & JUICY: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Wong and Wang go way back, from their common starts in stand-up in the San Francisco scene, moving to New York City and sharing cheap Chinatown eats together, and then both landing Hollywood jobs as writers for ABC’s Fresh Off the Boat.
Wong broke out not only as a stand-up starting with her first Netflix special, 2016’s Baby Cobra, but also co-starring in front of the camera on shows such as American Housewife and Black Box, and starring in the Netflix flick, Always Be My Maybe. Wang, meanwhile, continued to perfect his stand-up over the 2010s, recording a half-hour for Comedy Central in 2011, winning that year’s NBC “Stand-Up For Diversity” contest, doing Late Night with Jimmy Fallon in 2014, making the finals of NBC’s Last Comic Standing in 2015, and performing on HBO’s 2 Dope Queens in 2019.
He hints at the struggle at times in his debut hour, joking about how he’d stretch his budget by making the most of his health-insurance deductibles, or by eating fast-food on the road, or taking advantage of the peculiar opportunities provided by an office day job. Wang also recognizes how his experiences and privileges compare, not only to his Taiwanese immigrant parents, but also to one of his Houston middle school classmates in Beyoncé (Wang is a year older than the superstar).
What Comedy Specials Will It Remind You Of?: Even if the laid-back vibe didn’t give it away, just hearing the way Wang says “It’s hard to see your ignorance alphabetized” illustrates the unmistakable influence of the late great Mitch Hedberg on Wang’s cadence and sensibility. In only all of the good ways.
Memorable Jokes: The line above comes when Wang enters a bookstore and surveys the aisles in front of him. It also comes after he has established his persona, not just with his laid-back delivery, but also with the material itself — demonstrating how little he cares as he gets older, from buying his pants at Costco, to mocking his own choice in a favorite candy bar, and finding joy in discovering how deep a friend’s kitchen sink is. His style, epitomized by a meta-reflexive joke about procrastination.

Our Take: It all flows so smoothly, too.
After introducing himself and his point of view to the audience, he slides right into how it fits into situations ripe for sitcom plots. You can envision the misfit squad with whom he plays pickup hoops. You can feel his pain when something goes awry for him on the court. You follow him through his treatment options, which circles back to Costco before pivoting to his approach to the U.S. healthcare system, and what he’s learned in both his own experiences as well as those of his girlfriend. After making a persuasive argument for coordinating your injuries and sicknesses with the calendar, he delivers a quote-worthy tag: “Don’t get hurt in December. That’s for losers.” The pose you see in the photo above illustrates how pleased with himself he is after meeting his annual deductible.
Whatever your economic or political beliefs, who cannot relate to the plight of a person trying to beat the system, or at least get the biggest bang for their limited bucks?

Wang doesn’t mind sharing his secrets as well as his struggles as a comedian on the come-up, whether he’s sharing his poor eating habits on the road, or revealing that he once paid more to get to a gig in Boston than the gig was paying him. But it’s in his responses to these predicaments that he proves that the funniest comedians don’t need to wait long to make fun of their own tragedies, no matter how minor they may be. He even finds a way to turn annual rent increases in New York City into a motivational tool.
And with all the current trending on social media about “quiet quitting” among Gen Z and younger Millennial workers, Wang already knows the score on how employees for years have used workplace settings to their personal advantage.
Likewise, as the son of immigrants, Wang also can acknowledge that choosing a comedy career might not have been the best investment to prove his worth as an American. But it should pay off a lot more in the years to come.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Sounds like Hedberg. Looks like a stepbrother of Sean Lennon. Delivers as hilariously and harmoniously as the both of them.
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.