Summary
Someday You’ll Die is Nikki Glaser’s darkest and best special yet.
Things are going pretty well for Nikki Glaser. She was once again the clear stand-out in The Roast of Tom Brady on Netflix, which shouldn’t come as much of a surprise since she’s always the stand-out in roasts. But Someday You’ll Die, her hour-long special for HBO, is another roast, this time of herself, which means it’s probably the best special she’s done.
The last one I covered was Bangin’ on Netflix, a one-note hour entirely about sex, which seemed like a waste. Glaser has plenty of decent material on the subject, but she’s better when she’s riskier. Someday You’ll Die has its share of sex jokes – including a very funny closer that extrapolates a private fantasy into a ridiculous bit of physical comedy – that might cause a few viewers to roll their eyes, but that’s certainly not all Glaser wants to talk about.
She herself remains the focal point, though. She’s getting older. She’s childless. Gravity is taking its toll. These subjects are setups for punchlines, obviously, but they’re also part of a coherent self-examination. Glaser riffs on how she became the way she is, her anxieties about aging and motherhood and her body, and what all that might mean for her future in Hollywood and elsewhere.
And it’s good. It’s the kind of special a comedian tapes after they’ve been in the game a while, when the obvious stuff won’t cut it anymore and they’re having to dig deeper for a funny concept. We’ve heard Glaser talk about her body so much that there’s no novelty there. But talking about it in this context is new, honest enough to be relatable, and absurd enough to be funny.
This is a line Glaser walks consistently throughout Someday You’ll Die. All her jokes about abortion are really about the alienation she feels from losing her friends to motherhood; the ostracization she feels as a 39-year-old childless woman.
The suicide stuff is the same. A seemingly silly bit about having decided to one day kill herself is really a confession about her own suicidal ideation and depression – and an earnest plea for others who experience it to reach out for help.
There’s an honesty in all this. Glaser is a walking intrusive thought, and her giving voice to her darker musings helps people feel better about having their own. That said, though, she’ll be too much for some. She’s cavalier enough about very hot-button topics that sensitive types will be annoyed. But so what? What are they going to do, cancel her?
I’m not sure how you’d cancel someone like Nikki Glaser, or why you’d want to. She is, fundamentally, just telling the truth. She isn’t running for office or giving lectures on college campuses. She’s embellishing her real thoughts and experiences to get a laugh out of an audience. And if someone can’t joke about gangbangs and heroin on HBO, then what have things come to?
