Jane Fonda & Lily Tomlins: Ladies Night Live is so scattered that it does a disservice to every single comic associated with it.
After a week of pre-taped dispatches from the inaugural Netflix is a Joke comedy festival, we’re undeniably at a point when it’s become altogether impossible to tell apart one comedy showcase from another — save for when Pete Davidson brings his Staten Island energy and chaotic squad to the mix. Jane Fonda & Lily Tomlins: Ladies Night Live seems as if it’s cut from the same cloth.
Meant to be a tribute to the seven seasons of Grace & Frankie and by extension, the illustrious four-decade-long career of the comedic duo, the comedy showcase is themed naturally around funny women. Fonda and Tomlin host the special and introduce six diverse comedians, who as per the usual drill, get about five minutes of stage time before Crazy Ex Girlfriend’s Rachel Bloom and Broad City writer Eliott Glazer round it off with a musical performance. In a way, the format feels like a poetic generational passing-of-baton from two bonafide funny ladies, who are set to reunite again this year for the movie 80 to Brady.
Still, something feels off from the very first minute in the construction of the special. For one, there seems to be a dissonance between the cachet of Fonda and Tomlin and the purpose of the special.
I’d initially assumed that the point of having the Grace & Frankie co-stars host a comedy special would be to employ it as a sufficient reason to revisit their careers, their activism, or even their comic timing.
Here’s an idea: Get six female comics and ask them to do a set on Fonda and Tomlin’s legacy. Heck, even a special themed around a Grace & Frankie reunion would have easily managed to open the floodgates of our collective tear ducts. It’s telling from the unanimous applause that came midway through the showcase when June Diane Raphael and Brooklyn Decker interrupted the proceedings by pretending to be in character. They rushed on stage holding margaritas in a bid to toast their on-screen mothers, who proceeded to trade barbs with them. It made for a sweet, fun moment that effectively displayed their effortless chemistry and comic timing. It almost made me wish that Jane Fonda & Lily Tomlins: Ladies Night Live actually chose to head in that direction.
Instead, Fonda & Tomlin came across looking like presenters reading out a script at an award ceremony — a fact that even the duo acknowledged in their opening monologue. “We don’t need to give out awards tonight,” the duo say, “…because everybody’s a winner.” Turns out, that’s the segue for the stand-up acts to begin, almost all of which feel too abrupt to have any effect. Part of the reason is because of the special’s unwillingness to fully commit to one theme. In ensuring that they do justice to the comedic pairing of Fonda & Tomlin, who take to answering fan questions in one underwhelming segment, Jane Fonda & Lily Tomlins: Ladies Night Live ends up failing its six comics. It’s not that their sets are particularly bad, just that all of them aren’t afforded enough time to warm up the audience. In that, it defeats the point of the showcase in the first place.
For some reason, all of the six comics do sets that centre around life in the pandemic. Heather McMahan employed the lockdown to observe how women are better in tense situations than men. Michelle Buteau fared a little better on the laughs front, earning a couple with her ingenious bit about the tragedy of burping inside your mask for the first time. Cristela Alonzo, the first Latina woman to create, produce, write, and star in a US primetime comedy, pondered over the grocery habits of rich, white, people (cans of soda, wine, and cheese that smell like feet) during the pandemic. Alonzo proved to be a dark horse, possessing a couple of storytelling tricks in her bag despite the criminally short stage time.
Iliza Shlesinger turned out to be a worthy follow-up act, bringing in her trademark breathless monologue delivery style to craft a superb defense of the Karen in a bit that revolved around spotlighting the current trend that has gripped America: the “woke-off” contest. “My greatest fear,” admits Shlesinger, “is being outwoked by another white, liberal woman.” What laid the foundation for the comedian’s dazzling set was how unaffected she seemed from the task at hand: turning the audience on your side in under three minutes. Tracey Ashley and Angela Johnson-Reyes were pretty forgettable, a void suitably filled by queer comedian Margaret Cho, who went somber with her reflections about anti-Asian hate in the wake of the pandemic before landing a terrific bit about sex work.
I wish the showcase ended there but again, for some reason, the makers thought it would be a great idea to bring in Bloom and Glazer to sing a bunch of old songs that relate with the comedy showcase in no matter whatsoever. If anything, it revealed the sheer inability of a comedy showcase to do one thing it should be able to do blindly: entertain its audience. That in a way, summarises Jane Fonda & Lily Tomlins: Ladies Night Live — it’s so scattered that it does a disservice to every single comic associated with it.
Jane Fonda & Lily Tomlins: Ladies Night Live is streaming on Netflix
Poulomi Das is a film and culture writer, critic, and programmer. Follow more of her writing on Twitter.
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