This is a blue special so stop reading if you don’t want to read about sex.

Nikki Glaser is 100% who she is and incapable of anything else, on-stage or off. During this special, she actually makes that point out right but you can really feel the truth of it in this material. In her standup act, Glaser doesn’t craft an hour’s worth of deadly one-liners for the sole point of being funny (don’t get me wrong, she absolutely has this skill; see her performances on At Midnight). Instead, her standup is a true reflection of her life, a peek inside her brain, what she’s thinking about, what’s she’s going through, her worries, and her preoccupations. She is incapable of being anything but fully authentic on stage, so much so that it is had led to breakups.

And this special finally crystalized for me, after years of being a fan, that Glaser’s pure, unfiltered authenticity is the thing that draws me to her.

I first saw this material in Milwaukee with my mother on October 22nd, 2021 in the Pabst Theatre (the picture in this post is of the Pabst theatre before the show) about a month before she filmed it in Denver. She told us she was getting ready to film an HBO special and was working to cut her material down to an hour. If my mom had her way, she would have cut it down to zero. My mom absolutely hated every second of this show, which is a totally accurate possible alternate title to the special⎻Nikki Glaser: Your Mom Will Hate It. And that’s a good thing!

This material is as filthy, outrageous, and shocking as material can be. But Glaser never does what she does for the sake of being “shocking and gross.” As she says, her job as a comic is to find that Venn diagram of what is true but you haven’t thought of it before. And I think Glaser does that, even if she makes you squirm in your seat because she asks you to choose which parent you would go down on and talks about taking huge dick-sized dumps.

For me, and probably only me, part of the “good clean” title of this special is that this material is as structurally well-organized as a finely honed legal brief written by the sharpest attorney. The hour is neatly broken down into three clear-cut sections, with her key points emphasized by her numbering them off. Let’s get into it!

Section I: Vagina

This isn’t Glaser’s first foray into talking about her “hastily packed suitcase” on stage. I would go so far as to say that Glaser is the Frida Kahlo of vagina comedy. It might be the same subject but it’s always interesting, comes from a new perspective, and is art that I find worth consuming. Also, what great comic doesn’t revisit favorite topics? I never get sick of Bill Burr trashing women or yelling about overpopulation, Bert Kreischer talking about getting drunk, or Ari Shaffir’s drug adventures. And I never get sick of Nikki Glaser talking about her vagina.

That’s because Glaser is a killer joke writer and she especially shines when she surprises and misdirects. Two of the most Glaser-esque misdirection punchlines of this special were in the vagina section.

●Glaser talks about a guy wanting to call her “daddy” in bed and how she tries to turn him off of it by making the idea seem undesirable, eventually devolving into a full goo goo ga ga baby in the bedroom. The surprise punchline here earned roaring laughter from the crowd, both at the live show I attended in Milwaukee and at this special in Denver, maybe the most of the night.

● DJ Khaled proclaimed he doesn’t eat his wife’s pussy. Glaser looked into it to see if there was a justifiable reason and found that there was. The reason she came up with is another perfect example of Glaser playing with your expectations and surprising you. Who can surprise as masterfully as Nikki Glaser? Maybe just Anthony Jelsenik?

I don’t know why but somehow I enjoy Glaser’s comedy more because Glaser is open about the fact that she isn’t sexually promiscuous. I think her openness about this helps highlight that Glaser talks about sex so much because she is just genuinely curious about and interested in sex as a topic; not because she’s personally having all kinds of sex.

Lastly, Glaser is aware she talks about her vagina a lot and that people on reddit criticize her for it. She makes light of this in satisfying fashion, saying she is finally ready to close the vagina comedy chapter of her career and “and, like, pivot, like…to my asshole.”

Section II: Asshole

This section is simple. It is Glaser pitching anal sex and giving advice for how to make it a pleasant experience, each numbered item starting with #2, of course. If not for the jokes, she could make her own anal sex you tube channel. But there are jokes including another Glaser classic misdirect involving eating the President’s ass.

The isn’t just blue material. There’s actually a meaningful takeaway, which is that sex is funny and the only healthy way to approach it is with a sense of humor.

Section III: Getting to I Do.

When we’re talking about this special in a decade, it will be this section that we talk about. Glaser wants to find a husband and her latest guide for that effort is the book Getting To I Do, a book given to her by friends and full of evolutionarily and biologically-based great advice but with a title and cover so horrifying, it would be better to make it look like you are reading Mein Kampf instead. Glaser organizes this section around the three lessons of the book:

1. Be Fuckable
2. Don’t Fuck Him
3. Don’t Talk

1. Be Fuckable.

If you want to get a husband, you always have to look fuckable. Wear “a sun dress while skiing,” “wear heels that make your legs look great but your feet look like they have been through the Ming dynasty,” but look fuckable. We’re all animals beholden to biology and men want a woman who looks like she is ovulating.

Then we get the Old Souls bit. Oh, the Old Souls bit. Glaser has a bunch of friends in their 40s who are all dating women in their 20s, claiming that what they love about those women is that they have old souls. Glaser touches on the experience of aging and starting to slowly lose your youthful hotness, how easy it is to feel like you’ll always be hot in your 20s, and she flirts with issues of consent and abuse, issues that she has telegraphed she will be covering in more depth in future material. Glaser screaming “They don’t all have old souls!” might be the most enduring image of her comedy career.

2. Don’t Fuck Him

If you want to get a husband, you can’t fuck the guy because he will lose interest. It’s based on biology and wanting to get multiple women pregnant.

CUT JOKE ALERT! In Milwaukee and on at her show in Chicago (as seen on her reality show), she did a joke in this section about how she used to just give blowjobs to avoid catching feelings but she ultimately found that she would still catch feelings because when you give a blowjob, the dick is close your heart.

3. Don’t Talk.

Men aren’t “horny for women who talk a lot.” Male comics get incredibly hot women but female comics don’t get any romantic interest. Again, it’s rooted in evolution and biology. (Harsh female voices could alert a nearby tribe to their presence.) Nikki ends the set by acting like a stereotypically hot, dumb woman, giggling and flirting and definitely not talking. “Wait. Do you hear that? That’s blood rushing to all of your dicks right now.”

CUT JOKE ALERT! In Milwaukee, Glaser had a joke about Mulaney and how this proved the point. “Look at Olivia Munn. I don’t think I’ve ever heard her speak.” This is gold. Why did you cut, it Nikki!? Why!?

Little Delights:

●The use of invisalign throughout this special was the perfect microcosm of Glaser’s comedy. I loved seeing her take it out right before she walked on stage and seeing her mind works as she has to think Invisalign logistics during sex (you don’t have to take it out during blowjobs and might as well have sex because I forgot my invasalign).

●Wireless pink mic!

●Glaser gave several nods to her superfans. There are Taylor Swift lyrics and references. There is an F Boy Island reference. I can see how Glaser has earned herself superfans that are probably a little too obsessed for her comfort. I met my husband when I was 28 so I spent a few years feeling old to not be in a relationship and worried that my authentic, blunt personality would make it hard for me to ever find someone. If this special had come out when I was 27, it would have been a defining comedy special of my life. For single women in their mid 30s, it must feel like a religion.

●Seeing her bump hands with her boyfriend, Chris, before the special! Glaser admitted on the Good One podcast that this special was released months after it was originally supposed to be released because she kept missing editing deadlines. I think the special benefits from the late release because Glaser super fans got the chance to see the material informed by her reality show and the knowledge that Glaser is in a happy, committed relationship. We get to watch the special knowing that Getting to I Do maybe did work for her a little and that she isn’t lamenting the “epidemic of old souls” from a resentful position.

●Peeking under the hood. When you watch a comedy special in a vacuum, it can feel like the comedian just invented the material on the spot and you don’t have an understanding of the hard work that went into carefully honing that hour. Glaser’s reality show gave fans a behind the scenes look at the process for honing an hour of special-worthy material. We got to see her traveling to different comedy clubs in Los Angeles, and we got to see perform at a theatre in Chicago with her parents and Chris watching. Seeing her do workout the material made the special feel like the culmination of hard work, which makes it somehow more rewarding to watch.

●HBO. Netflix has been making some bad decision with comedy specials lately and it is nice to see another network hit some comedy home runs. With Rothaniel and Glaser both on HBO this year, we might be able to look to HBO as a network that releases few comedy specials but the ones it releases are always great.