A very pregnant Ali Wong holds nothing back in her second Netflix standup special, Hard Knock Wife
Ali Wong isn’t your average “bad mom.” The standup comedian and writer for ABC’s Fresh Off the Boat doesn’t turn wine into “mommy’s juice” or joke about parenting duties for the sake of being relatable. Instead, in her new Netflix special, Hard Knock Wife, she approaches the aftermath of pregnancy with a sense of gross fascination. Wong’s material is a brand of feminist comedy that subverts what it means to be feminist, and what it means to be a woman who just wants to lie down rather than “lean-in.” Or at least she portrays herself that way on stage.
Her comedy is in the same raunchy vein as Comedy Central’s Broad City — a show about two Jewish women slacking off, having sex with dentists and venturing around New York City — but there’s something more critical and political to Wong’s comedy, even when she’s talking about her nipples looking like fingers.
She performed her first Netflix special, 2016’s Baby Cobra, while seven months pregnant. That set focuses on Wong trying to ‘trap’ her Harvard Business School graduate husband after a rambunctious young adulthood. In the special, she dreams of being a stay-at-home mom, living off her husband’s salary and pooping without coworkers around. But the special ends on a turn: her husband has loads of student debt and he’s trapped her for her TV writer salary. It is a rare stand up comedy set with a noticeable arc.
Hard Knock Wife follows a less-defined arc and focuses on the consequences of being trapped. Instead, very pregnant with her second child, Wong turns to the aftermath of her first pregnancy including hospital mesh diapers, wanting to seduce young nannies and other parenting mishaps. She talks about parenting duties with a sense of dismay and a hint of genuine anger. “A lot of people like to ask me, how on Earth do you balance a family and career?” she says midway through. “Men never get asked that question… ’cause they don’t.” She delivers it with fire and flippancy, as if to say ‘this sucks, but I’ll take it.’
Throughout Hard Knock Wife, Wong balances this smart commentary with grotesque and sexual humor — mimicking how lazy men give oral sex and lifting up her dress to mock teens hooking up. Even her most cringeworthy moments garner belly laughs, not just for the physical humor or mentions of sex, but because there’s a nugget of relatability. We have all been there — whether stealing hospital underwear or imagining what our bodies will look like post C-section. We just don’t talk about it, or we coat it in a glossy sheen when we do.
Wong’s character is relatable in the way Broad City’s Ilana and Abbi are — quirky and sometimes gross — but there’s not the same sense of twisted reality. Sure, Wong says she’s accidentally had sex with homeless people twice, but the joke is more on her perception than it is on the homeless people. Wong has acted in dramas before, and maybe that’s where this darkness in her comedy comes from.
On The Todd Barry Podcast in 2015, she said that dark comedy expresses a sense of truth about the world, and that sense of truth is present in Hard Knock Wife. Wong admits that she doesn’t like being a stay-at-home mom because it means she has to deal with her kids — she only really likes the stay-at-home part. The bad mom archetype is often mean and ruthless, sometimes lazy, but Wong subverts this by legitimately expressing care for her kids. Her voice changes to a gentle coo as she talks about holding her daughter’s skin against her own, but the show of bonding ended on her daughter’s terms. “She shit on my chest!”, she almost shouts.
This all makes for a pitch-perfect watch. The pacing between topics is effortless, and Wong’s jokes never comes across as too manic or disorienting. While most comedians are usually able to get physical with little to no restriction, Wong has a pregnant belly to maneuver around, making it more impressive when she lifts her skirt, humps the air or crouches low on the stage. But audiences are well-aware of just how pregnant Wong is during all her physical antics, making the set that much funnier, and all the more a statement — whether intentional or not.
In a society where pregnant women are expected to view their bodies as a holy vessel, where it’s taboo to talk about sex during pregnancy or where women are uneducated about changes their bodies go through before and after having a child, Ali Wong says what she wants. She’s a comedian, a mom and a wife, but most importantly, she’d just like to lie down. In all honesty, wouldn’t we all?
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