Cis Woke Grief Slut
Prime Video · 2024 · 61 min
A dry, cynical set about grief, aging, and political outrage.
Laurie Kilmartin has built a reputation on her willingness to lean directly into personal and political tragedy, making her one of the few comics who can discuss her mother dying of COVID-19 or getting doxxed by Fox News viewers and make it sound like a casual Tuesday. She pairs a dry, matter-of-fact delivery with a philosophy that almost any dark reality can be made manageable if you sandwich it between enough dick and boob jokes.
Filmed at the El Portal Theatre in North Hollywood, the 2024 special catches the former Conan staff writer at a point in her career where she has nothing left to prove. Having spent decades in late-night writers’ rooms and on the road, Kilmartin approaches her set with calm confidence. Her targets are varied: she mocks Gen X men on dating apps as “horny, brain-damaged, shaken babies” who played high-school sports before concussion protocols, questions the sudden feminism of men who only care about women’s rights once they have daughters, and recounts her viral 2022 MSNBC joke about tracking down the Supreme Court leaker to get pregnant and “joyfully abort the fetus”.
While some of the cultural observational bits, like a joke about “Karens,” feel a bit familiar, the hour excels when Kilmartin gets highly specific. She riffs on receiving a $100 JetBlue voucher after sitting next to a masturbating passenger, jokes about Boy Scout circumcision badges, and details her grief. She is far more interested in finding absurd angles on the grim reality of her mother’s death than trying to offer comfort.
The set list
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Reading The Diary of Anne Frank to her 10-year-old son
Her son is mortified when Anne begins menstruating on page ten; she provides revisionist history where Anne moves to America, marries James Taylor, and opens Ann Taylor Loft to honor her time in the attic.
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Being attacked on Fox News over an abortion joke told on MSNBC
Recounts Sean Hannity and Lara Trump dissecting a joke she threw away on a Sunday night, satirizing right-wing hysteria and the dynamics of cancel culture.
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Her mother dying from COVID-19 in 2020
Centers the special around finding hilarious and dark humor in her mother's hospitalization and passing.
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Men who become bare-bones feminists after fathering daughters
Critiques formerly douchey men who suddenly adopt basic anti-rape views only after having a girl.
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Black Twitter and shower habits
Unpacks her love of Black Twitter and how a specific viral thread almost made her alter her personal shower routine.
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Politicians' obsession with trans women and bathroom policies
Cracks the code on the real motivations behind conservative fixations on bathroom access.
How it plays
- Tone
- Dark, satirical, cathartic, wry, and sharp
- On stage
- Clever, composed, bold, and matter-of-fact while delivering dark and whimsical material
- Pace
- Composed and straightforward delivery contrasting with dark subject matter
- About
- grief and parental loss, COVID-19 pandemic, abortion and reproductive rights, right-wing media hysteria and cancel culture, parenting, gender and feminism
What the critics said
Universally praised by critics as dark comedy done right, skillfully balancing grief, taboo themes, and political controversy with technical precision and genuine catharsis.
In the room: Captivated and engaged; despite minimal crowd work, Kilmartin held the room in the palm of her hand without alienating the audience over taboo topics.
Backstory
Crafted following the loss of her mother to COVID-19 in 2020 (which she live-tweeted) and after being targeted and doxxed by Sean Hannity and right-wing media following an abortion joke told on MSNBC in 2022
Details
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