Ali Wong is back on Netflix with Don Wong, her third stand-up comedy special for the streaming outlet. It’s a raunchy, intimate, hilarious piece of work that manages the difficult task of being both accessible and niche. On the surface, it’s a relatable treatise on ambition–on reconciling youthful progressivism with parenthood and the traditional institution of marriage. On a deeper level, it’s a celebration of Asian American sexuality and love–one that frames Asian men as desirable and Asian women as self-determining. It feels good to feel seen.
Wong’s rise to comedic stardom has been meteoric. Her first Netflix special, Baby Cobra (2016), was a crude-but-clever thesis statement. In Wong, Netflix had discovered a bonafide star—someone who was bubbling just underneath the scene’s surface and needed the right audience and the right push to attain mainstream success.
Things moved quickly. Her second Netflix special, Hard Knock Wife (2018), affirmed her comedic talent. And in 2019, Wong starred in and co-wrote the Netflix romantic comedy Always Be My Maybe. That same year, Wong signed with Netflix for another two comedy specials; the first was intended for a 2020 release, to coincide with her national tour. But then, COVID-19 delayed everything. She resumed the “Milk and Money” tour this past summer, and she taped Don Wong in November 2021.
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Wong riffs on the success of her movie, her increasing fame, and her growing toddlers–topics that would not have been as fully formed or as funny a year-and-a-half ago. The best comedians are the ones who are in constant dialogue—who talk about themselves in the present day, but also interrogate their past selves. Wong does this, and puts a new twist on one of her most famous lines from Baby Cobra: “I don’t want to ‘Lean In.’ I want to ‘Lie Down.’” She continues to accurately pinpoint one of modern society’s half-truths–yes, you can “have it all,” but it will come at the cost of sleep, sanity, and precious time.
Watching a comedian work recklessly is thrilling. The late, great George Carlin ensured recklessness by design—he would throw out his entire hour of material at the end of a tour, thus forcing himself to delve deeper and deeper into himself for new bits. And more than ever, Wong is working recklessly. “I feel like I’m going through a midlife crisis,” Wong says, almost as an aside, shortly after delivering a bit about the quality of a powerful woman’s blowjob. She cracks herself up multiple times during the show, staring down audience members for maximum discomfort, and emphasizing her punchlines with a manic, devilish energy.
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Bemoaning the lack of hot, sane male comedy groupies: “Any man watching me, listening to what I have to say, and thinking to themselves, ‘I want to f*ck her,’ is a raging psychopath.” Her hurt is palpable—she’s a young Joan Rivers, both embracing and decrying the indignities of being a woman in comedy. In a later, Rivers-esque bit, she discusses aging through the lens of her self-lubrication; to say more would be to ruin one of the funniest, dirtiest parts in the show.
The act has a blue streak a mile wide. But what elevates it above shock comedy—above the sort of hack shit where sex talk is assumed to be inherently funny, no punchline required—is her clear love and affection for her husband. It’s ironic, since the entire special is based around her stated desire to cheat on him. But the practical reasons she gives for not doing it—she doesn’t want to fight over custody, she’d lose money, she probably wouldn’t have an orgasm—give way to more tender, sincere reasons. She concludes with some truths that are endearing in their vulnerability. He lets her be himself. He doesn’t let her walk on him. And ultimately, she needs him more than he needs her.
Wong’s husband is an Asian American man—a man who she praises as sexy, handsome, and intelligent, with a backbone made of steel. She never stoops to denigrating his Asian-ness as a negative, or a thing that exists “in spite of” these other qualities. Asian American entertainment is still “new’’ enough that several of its most prominent stars make themselves the punchline—making fun of their parents’ accents, for example, or the food they eat. It is, to use a turn of phrase, performative for the “white gaze.” In its worst iterations, it becomes an entire bit about preferring white men over Asian men—framing the latter as bookish, sheltered, asexual, or abusively paternalistic.
Wong knows better than to play into this expectation; she contradicts it at every turn. She has never shied away from it either. In Hard Knock Wife, she addresses the elephant in the room outright, flatly thanking all the Asian women in the room for bringing their white boyfriends. In Don Wong, she points out that all three of her romantic interests in Always Be My Maybe were Asian men, and wryly interrogates why that would be so surprising.
In a self-effacing moment, Wong discusses racial dirty talk as a kink. And because of how open she’s been about everything else, it reads as another facet of her inner, private life, rather than a contradiction. There’s a lot to unpack. But it’s better to do that unpacking with space, out in the open.
