Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Nikki Glaser: Good Girl’ on Hulu, where there’s no shame in this comedian’s sex game
Since stealing the show at Netflix’s live Roast of Tom Brady two years ago, Nikki Glaser‘s comedy career has rocketed to even greater heights, seeing her host the Golden Globes in consecutive years and even Saturday Night Live. After releasing hourlong specials for Comedy Central, Netflix, and HBO, Glaser heads to Hulu for her fifth such special, filmed in her hometown of St. Louis, where she reveals that fame hasn’t changed her on the inside, despite her wanting to change her outside appearance for the sake of her career. As she jokes:“It’s horrible, but it’s worth it.”
The Gist: Glaser’s career has been on the come-up for years, with her first breakthrough coming more than a dozen years ago when she co-hosted a late-night talker for MTV.
But the sex talk has been a hallmark of Glaser’s comedy, too, from her first starring vehicle for Comedy Central a decade ago, Not Safe with Nikki Glaser, through her gigs hosting FBoy Island and Lovers and Liars, her podcasts and radio shows with SiriusXM, and her previous half-hours and hours of stand-up featured on Comedy Central, Netflix, and HBO.
Although she has been in the public eye this whole time, complete with reality shows from Dancing with the Stars to The Masked Singer, to her E! show Welcome Home Nikki Glaser which followed her back to St. Louis from Hollywood and NYC, she suddenly finds herself with an even wider audience of fans paying attention to her and her jokes. Which in this hour, she uses to make fun of how her newfound celebrity clashes with day-to-day life in Missouri, and how hard it is to be a woman, no matter how famous or not you are.
What Comedy Special Will It Remind You Of? A famous funny lady dishing about her sex life puts Glaser in the same league as Ali Wong, while there’s one bit that brings to mind the “Last F**able Day” sketch from Inside Amy Schumer, albeit with new perspectives and interpretations from Glaser’s own experience.
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Memorable Jokes: Speaking of which, Glaser jokes at length about the personal and professional “health hazard” of womanhood, including the notion that the sex itself is perhaps the worst part of maintaining one’s f-abiilty into her 40s. Looking desireable? That’s great! The costs of maintaining those looks? “It’s horrible, but it’s worth it,” she says.
Whereas Glaser gained early notoriety for her ability to sling zings from the podium at Comedy Central Roasts, feeling the heat burned particularly deep for her, courtesy of Blake Griffin comparing her looks to those of a legendary basketball player. Glaser recalls she might not have felt bad about the joke if it weren’t for the crowd’s reaction to it, “as if it were the truest thing they’d ever heard.”
Regardless of that (or even more recent online speculation), she proudly vows to have a future facelift for the sake of getting better gigs for more years down the road. “Do you know how good it feels to have Bowen Yang write ‘DIVA’ with 19 As underneath a picture of you?”
She’s also still very open about her porn-watching habits, and it’s within this chunk of jokes where the titular “good girl” gets uttered, as in the two words Glaser believes every woman wants to hear during sex. Never you mind that her own dad is sitting front and center, and receives his daughter’s jacket from the stage later in the hour while Glaser is making fun of her pussy lips. The truly darkest parts of her set, however, come as she’s claiming she’s not good aunt material, citing as evidence her reaction to her 4-year-old nephew wanting to join her in the shower. If you’re worried by that imagery, then just imagine how she feels the scene might imprint on her nephew. And you won’t have to wonder about her thoughts on pedophilia, because you shall hear those, too.
Our Take: It’s more promising to focus on how much of an advocate Glaser is and has been for years in empowering women to love themselves and their bodies, and not hide in shame or endure any stigmas for it. No shame as a theme has run through her stand-up specials.
In this hour, she reveals her lifelong insecurity about her own genitalia, and how hearing a Dane Cook stand-up bit more than two decades ago, when she was but 18 or 19, prompted her to gather her girlfriends together for a sister act of information gathering and sharing. Now 41, Glaser has taken charge, and argues that women investing in their looks should not be seen as something lesser than a woman spending the same amount of money or more on advanced college degrees.
The real shame, she notes, is attempting to put women in their place about their bodies, while continuing to let men get away with sexual assault.“My career’s going great now, but it can’t last this long. I know eventually Hollywood is going to kick me out because I’m going to do something horrible, like age naturally,” she jokes, adding later: “Crow’s feet for women are the same for men as decades of rape. I think that’s it. They go, ‘Get out! You’re a monster!’”
Our Call: STREAM IT. Some of you prudes might be clutching your pearls, metaphorically, but Glaser is reaching an even wider audience now and has the jokes and material to hit home with an entire generation of young women who need all the body- and sex-positive role models they can get.
Moreover, there’s more than a small chance that Glaser isn’t just dropping one of the comedy specials of the summer, but also a song of the summer?!? That’s her voice you hear in the credits, as she sang, wrote and co-produced her own theme song, titled, obviously, “Good Girl.” It’s quite a bop. Good girl, Nikki!
How To Watch Nikki Glaser: Good Girl
If you’re new to Hulu, you can get started with a 30-day free trial on the streamer’s basic (with ads) plan. After the trial period, you’ll pay $10.99/month. If you want to upgrade to Hulu ad-free, it costs $18.99/month.
If you want to stream even more and save a few bucks a month while you’re at it, we recommend subscribing to one of the Disney+ Bundles, all of which include Hulu. These bundles start at $12.99/month for ad-supported Disney+ and Hulu and goes up to $32.99/month for Disney+, Hulu, and Max, all ad-free.
Sean L. McCarthy works the comedy beat. He also podcasts half-hour episodes with comedians revealing origin stories: The Comic’s Comic Presents Last Things First.
