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Promotional art for Bangin'
Cover image credit: via TMDB

Bangin'

Nikki Glaser

Netflix · 2019 · 63 min

Nikki Glaser brings high-energy, explicit honesty to modern dating.

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What makes this special stand out is Nikki Glaser’s insistence on treating women’s sexual desires and insecurities with the same clinical, dirt-under-the-fingernails specificity that male comics have spent decades applying to their own. Glaser does not do polite euphemisms. Instead, she gets right to the mechanics of dating, her preference for submissive roles in bed simply because it requires less effort, and the defensive choreography of keeping her hands strictly on a date’s neck during a goodnight kiss to avoid accidentally grazing his belt. It is an hour of highly detailed, hyper-candid comedy that functions like a late-night locker room conversation where all filter has been completely abandoned.

Filmed at The Academy in Los Angeles and released in late 2019, the show caught Glaser at a significant career turning point. She had spent the previous couple of years solidifying her status as a standout roaster at the Comedy Central Roasts, most recently making a splash at the Alec Baldwin roast just weeks prior, while hosting her daily SiriusXM morning show, You Up. This special translates that same fast-paced, high-heat energy to a solo hour, moving quickly through longer bits about her sobriety and her frustration with the uneven power dynamics of male compliments. Vulture named it one of the ten best comedy specials of the year, and it became one of the most-watched stand-up releases on Netflix during its premiere month.

The set list

4 bits

  1. Extended material on fellatio and emotional avoidance.

    Details how men seek physical control during oral sex and reflects that she is better at performing fellatio than communicating genuine emotional feelings.

  2. Male entitlement to orgasm.

    Acts out a male partner's petulant demand to climax like a whiny toddler throwing a tantrum for ice cream.

  3. Childhood awkwardness and body insecurities.

    Discusses growing up as an ugly child and coping with self-consciousness, including describing her vagina as resembling a 'hastily packed suitcase.'

  4. Stumbling upon feminism.

    Concludes the performance by acknowledging that her entire breakdown of sexual dynamics and female empowerment amounts to having stumbled into feminism.

How it plays

Tone
Deeply raunchy, bold, candid, feminist, and unapologetic.
On stage
Explicit, no-filter, self-deprecating, and hypersexualized while discussing personal issues with frank vulnerability.
Pace
Consciously tight, joke-dense, and structured into topical arcs rather than her usual free-flowing club set style.
About
sex and sexual politics, fellatio, female consent and autonomy, sobriety and drunken sex, body image and insecurity, masturbation and sex toys

What the critics said

Critics praised Glaser's sharp, fearless delivery and progressive subversion of sexual norms, though some reviewers felt the relentless, hour-long focus exclusively on sex jokes and fellatio became repetitive.

Summed up from reviews, articles and listings. Sources: rottentomatoes.com, allmovie.com, thetvdb.com, decider.com, wherever-i-look.com, upi.com, en.wikipedia.org, imdb.com, forbes.com.

Backstory

Crafted with the perspective of the MeToo movement, female autonomy, and sex-positivity in mind, aiming to speak to the 17-year-old version of herself regarding consent, dating, and sexual insecurities.

Details

Released
Runtime
63 min
Where
Netflix
Director
Nicholaus Goossen
Topics
Before
Nikki Glaser (2017)
After
Good Clean Filth (2022)

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