Jo Koy’s Father’s Day special
Putting aside that Jo Koy’s hosting of last January’s Golden Globes hosting landed like the Hindenburg amongst an audience that included a stone-faced Taylor Swift, his set for Netflix shot last November, Jo Koy: Live from Brooklyn, shows he’s funniest when he pivots to his own family as material.
While the Netflix special starts out with a takedown of haters, people who don’t laugh at his jokes (insisting they should “die”), and then a public service announcement about the health benefits of loud guffaws, Jo Koy: Live from Brooklyn really heats up when he channels his mother, his son, his dad, and his own self growing up in the olden days before social media.
There’s still a wealth of laughs close to home for Jo Koy, coming from a Filipino mom (“Josep...”) and a white military dad. The humor comes from contrasting how hard it was back in the day, while his own son just dials up Grab for quick meals. (“Grab Eats? How about ‘No Eats’?”) Everyone knows this was Eddie Murphy’s richest vein as a standup: doing his family onstage, exploring deprivation, making it funny. Jo Koy is a master at this.
He also devotes a chunk of his Netflix hour to reminding a young lad in the audience to respect his mother, launching into a lengthy, graphic, detailed tale of watching his own son being born, and witnessing the various trials suffered by his wife when the procedure went “beyond C-section.” Jo Koy passing out in the delivery room is just one of the highlights. So it’s both Mother’s Day Special and Father’s Day Special combined.