Iliza Shlesinger: Hot Forever

Iliza is a funny, eccentric, extremely intelligent writer, comedian, actress, and producer. I have watched all of her Netflix comedy specials. Her powerful high-energy scripts are delivered with an animated personality along with hilarious animal sounds and charismatic acting.

Being a self-proclaimed feminist, she always includes a political segment in her dialect where women's rights abuses are highlighted. Courageously talking about these social failures In today's society has long been overdue.

Nonetheless, despite Eliza being fully capable of addressing more of the societal issues at a greater scale, her general formula has been far less inclusive. Most of her material underlines a hedonistic culture where all women are immersed in an internalized inferiority complex. Women's fitness and facade as well as how much she's cherished is forthrightly proportioned to her self-confidence. And, men are dong swinging simpletons with progenation as their only purpose.

After a while this type of material gets old. And I haven't laughed even once. I think that she needs to be more inclusive and figure out better substance than how her bra fits or underwear looks. She is capable of producing far better material.

She tells jokes that are specifically for young single/casually dating women. Absolutely nothing wrong with that, but if you don't fall into that category, it's unlikely you will enjoy this. She can make jokes for whoever she wants, but this is not good material for a date night, which I think most stand-up comedy aims to be good for. This is very specific target audience comedy and if you don't fall into that category you're not wanted or invited to be a part of her audience.

Not a surprise, this has been her MO for a while, but for anyone wondering if she would pull back towards a broader audience... nope.

.... Now she's only funny to her base.

There's no "edge" here. No "sharp" wit. She gets on stage and then proceeds to speak as fast as she possibly can, and repeat the same lines at least 4 times... over and over. As if repeating a rather dull "joke" makes it funnier. It doesn't. The speed at which she speaks almost makes it seem she as if she just wants to get it over with as quickly as possible. Her comedic timing is REALLY lacking in this special.

I think she may be suffering from a glass bubble. She's risen to the level where of course she has fans. Fans that will follow her regardless of what she says/creates - "fangurlz". So, who turns out to those "run up" shows where she is testing new jokes.... those fans obviously. Which, I'd guess, are mostly women around 40. So which jokes "work" or not in these "test" shows is all based on these audiences of predominantly older "fangurlz". And that is glaringly obvious in this special. It's a special which is nearly entirely geared towards women 40 or older.

Now, there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. But it does kill off the non-40-year-old female fans she may have had. 30 minute bits about bras just isn't funny to me. I'll never understand why audiences seemingly "roar" just because she does some silly voice. A flat "joke" delivered in a silly voice is still a flat "joke."

When she started her career she was fantastic and mixing things up and making ANY audience member laugh. She timed delivery, and took breaths, so things could be ingested as opposed to rattling off line after line. Now, she's just focusing on speed and making older women laugh. This special is really rather poor, that is unless you're a "fangurl."

I had a VERY hard time finding much humor in this special... probably I'm not an older woman who is down on men and finds bras funny.

Such a shame, I loved her previous stand ups so much but with this one I just felt like I kept waiting for a punchline that never came, I couldn't relate to any of it.

It was so slow and weird, the same lines were repeated over and over again as if each one was a completely new joke, while the first one wasn't even necessarily funny.

It's mostly weird body contortions, weird voices, strange mimicks and inner dialogues that just don't sound organical.

She's trying to relate so much to a specific demographic and I just don't understand which.

Also, and I don't know if this is actually the case, but at times I felt like a lot of the cheering and applause was added in post production because the audience would go completely balistic but then the camera would zoom out and most people were just sitting there silently and very few people were actually clapping.

Going to a comedy show should be fun. But in this case, it wasn't very fun. I normally like Iliza ... she's very intelligent & talented, and her comedic timing is great. But if I had paid good money to sit in that audience in Ohio on this July night, I would have come out of there thinking "what in the world just happened, and where did our "date night" go???" Yes, she has a microphone in her hand and wants to use it to make the world a better place, but somehow she turned a night of comedy into a night of being scolded. I agree with many of her opinions, but I don't want to hear about them at a stand-up comedy show. Maybe she could have "touched" on those subjects for a minute or two, but she just kept going and going and it all started to feel uncomfortable and weird. Sorry Iliza, but you missed the mark on this one. Keep telling the world how you feel and keep trying to make it better, but you're a comedienne, so you should keep it funny.