Katherine Ryan’s Netflix comedy special is like a saucy Gilmore Girls, and she’s a woke Lorelai who doesn’t need a man — and pretty much hopes never to have one.
The Canadian comedian follows up her 2017 stand-up, In Trouble, with a new release, Glitter Room, in which she takes shots at everyone from men to the president to more men.
It’s occasionally funny, though the best thing about it may be Ryan’s sparkling blouse. In some ways, her comedy is like her shirt: charming, diverting, and very in your face. It can be insightful, as it is when she explains how single parenthood is completely different for men and women.
“If you’re unsure about your choices, ask yourself: ‘Would I be more celebrated if I were doing this as a man?’” she said. “They would have made me ‘The Bachelor’ two years ago. Like, ‘Oh my god, how does he do it? … How does he raise a gorgeous young daughter without financial help from anywhere?’ And there’d be memes of me, just vacuuming with no shirt on.”
There are YouTube videos of fathers braiding their daughters’ hair that have millions of views, she says. For a mom, it’s just three sections of hair intertwined.
But at other times, Ryan uses her gender commentary to rehash tired tropes about men, marriage, and society.
“I love men, but I feel that men are like dolphins in that they should be enjoyed on holiday,” she says in the opening minutes of her stand-up. “And they’re very intelligent, almost as smart as people. But that doesn’t mean you should have one in your house.”
To be fair, comedy is often offensive, and it’s meant to be uncomfortable. In general, a stand-up isn’t even funny unless it’s a little off-color. But there’s a difference between joking about saying “Grandma’s a whore” as a child without knowing what the word meant and saying that “a large number“ of men “turn out to be sexual predators.” One is ironic; the other substitutes humor with bitterness.
Ryan’s bit about Céline Dion, on the other hand, is funnier than it at first appears, especially to those unfamiliar with the singer’s history. Dion is 51 years old and still killing it, Ryan begins.
“Why?” she asks. “Because her husband is dead.”
What starts as a misandrist quip, though, turns into an incisive critique of the exploitation of women and celebrities.
“It’s not that I think the only good husbands are dead ones. It’s that I know Céline Dion’s husband met her when he was 38 years old, and she was … 12. And the whole world collectively decided to let that one slide.”
Ryan’s stand-up is full of paradoxes, as it waffles between humorous bits about her “fancy” British daughter and obnoxious tropes about dumb men. She told Forbes that she wanted this special to become more universal by focusing on relationships, and stories about her nine-year-old and even her exes can be entertaining.
Netflix categorizes Ryan’s stand-up as “irreverent,” “cynical,” and “provocative.” It is all of those things. But rarely is it funny. Ryan deemphasizes skills such as her great voices (including Russian, Canadian, and Cardi B) and focuses instead on the failures of men and marriage.
She’s at her best when she’s playing with gender stereotypes in a lighthearted way, and at her worst when she’s relying on tropes about “toxic masculinity.”
This may be the peril of doing comedy in the #MeToo era: To make light of how many women have become victims of sexual assault, some female comedians feel like they have to make all men terrible. Could it ever be funny to let them be good?
