Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Jena Friedman: Ladykiller’ On Peacock, Where Impending Motherhood Prompts A Comedian To Take A Harder Focus

Jena Friedman released her debut stand-up comedy special on Seeso in 2016, which means you can’t see it so much now. For her second solo special, she’s got a plus one along for the ride. Spoiler alert? Friedman was 27 weeks pregnant when she filmed Ladykiller for Peacock this July. Despite plenty of abortion jokes, Friedman’s keeping the baby. Is her special also a keeper?

JENA FRIEDMAN: LADYKILLER: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: A former writer for David Letterman and segment producer for The Daily Show, Friedman began to show us her talents in front of the camera as a shrewdly serious yet also satirical interviewer in shows such as Soft Focus for Adult Swim, and Indefensible for Sundance (the second season of Indefensible premieres at the end of this month on AMC+).
Friedman has proven herself more than willing to go there, as it were, earning a Writer’s Guild of America award and Oscar nomination for co-scripting Borat: Subsequent Moviefilm, and her stand-up is equally ferocious. Perhaps even more so due to the timing of it. As Friedman explained in a statement accompanying her special’s release on Peacock: “I wasn’t pregnant when I sold the special and Roe hadn’t yet been overturned, so the confluence of those two things happening as I was prepping to tape Ladykiller, made me really appreciate having a platform where I could talk about some of the things I have been losing sleep over since Roe was overturned, and to do so particularly before the midterms. I hope it will resonate with viewers, and on a personal level, it has been incredibly cathartic.”

What Comedy Specials Will It Remind You Of?: Performing stand-up while pregnant has become more normalized thanks to comedians such as Ali Wong and Amy Schumer, but while those forebearers may have juxtaposed their pregnancies with crude or crass jokes, Friedman’s sense of humor comes across as more dangerous in its confrontational bluntness.
Memorable Jokes: So many zingers in this hour.
Right from the start, after showing the camera her side profile to get a full glimpse of her pregnant belly, Friedman quips: “I’ve never wanted to be a mom, but I’ve always wanted to be a prop comic.”

Among her other instantly quotable quips:

• “No one gives a shit about mom jokes. They’re like the moms of jokes.”
• “A boyfriend is like a podcast that you can fuck.”
• “Find someone who looks at you like a white cop looks at a white mass shooter.”
• Referring indirectly to Mike Birbiglia’s one-man show on Broadway about becoming a father for the first time (Mike Birbliglia: The New One, filmed for Netflix): “It was so good, because he had time to write it.”
• Referring indirectly to Dave Chappelle and claims of his transphobia: “Hate gives you wrinkles, and in the rare case, 6 Netflix specials.”
• “If only I were anti-Semitic, I’d fill stadiums across the country.”

Our Take: What might make Friedman’s comedy tough to swallow for your typical late-night TV audience is precisely what makes her vital in starring vehicles where her penetrating punchlines and dark humor can truly shine. It’s no wonder Sacha Baron Cohen hired Friedman to help him maneuver his way through scrapes such as duping a pregnancy center doctor into believing his daughter needed a baby taken out of her.
But Friedman finds herself cracking abortion jokes while carrying her own baby to term. Her personal circumstances, coming as they do when the politics have shifted, have led to perhaps her sharpest comedic work because it’s so laser-focused. Here and now, her sound and fury signifies everything.
Now more than ever, Friedman can zero in on how legislation and societal norms disfavor women; mothers, even more so. As she observes a friend claiming to suffer from postpartum depression, Friedman rejects the notion outright. No: “You’re just picking up what America is throwing down. America hates moms.” She suggests that if women want proper paid leave for motherhood, they should become a cop and shoot someone. It’s brutally funny because it’s a brutally honest observation.
Same goes for Friedman’s take on conspiracy theories, offering that believing the late JFK Jr. still lives is somehow still more credible than a pregnant virgin, tagging her comedic gift with a Christmas due date: “Unpack that.” And yet, Friedman also has worked in satirical circles long enough to know she won’t likely change any minds among Q-Anon believers or MAGA Republicans. “I don’t want to make fun of them because it’s not working,” she says.
What might have more impact? Reminding her audience and viewers about the cases of Janette Fennell and Gabby Petito. Fennell actually survived being left to die in the trunk of her car, and her activism afterward led to a mandate for all car trunks to have safety latches. Not that anyone remembers her name. Petito, on the other hand, died at the hands of her fiance, even though police could have saved her earlier. Talk about ladykillers. The idea that women still too often can become murder victims at the hands of their male partners, or men they don’t know, and society does less for them than they do for unborn babies. It haunts Friedman. She says she enjoys watching sports for the mere fact that, unlike in politics or in life, at least half of the men on the field of play will lose. She tries to get the men in her audience to chant “it’s not my fault” (a la Good Will Hunting?) or give them options to put them more at ease. Why does she bring this all up? “We have to laugh, otherwise we would just cry.”

Our Call: STREAM IT. Friedman claims she chose political comedy because joking about sex and sexuality made her uncomfortable, despite the notion that women in comedy her age were encouraged to do so to make men pay attention to them. “Long story short, that’s why nobody knows me.” It’s about time everybody knows Friedman now.

Will you stream or skip the comedy special Jena Friedman: Ladykiller on @peacock? #SIOSI

— Decider (@decider) October 21, 2022

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.

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• Jena Friedman: Ladykiller
• Peacock
• Stream It Or Skip It
• True Crime Story: Indefensible