Just Keep Livin’?

Jen Kirkman begins her second Netflix hour with a story about trying to be peaceful. After five minutes of morning meditation, she gets yelled at by a honking driver at a green light, snaps, screams “I meditated today, motherf*cker!” and lies that her mother died that morning just to win the argument. The driver’s response: “You’re still a dumbass.” It’s a perfect encapsulation of Kirkman’s stage persona: highly strung, deeply self-aware, and constantly fighting a losing war against the minor indignities of daily life.

Taped at the Bowery Ballroom in New York City and released in January 2017, the special catches Kirkman at a confident point in her career.

Having spent two decades on the stand-up circuit and built a loyal following from her work on Chelsea Lately and Drunk History, she had recently transitioned into a prominent voice for single, child-free women over forty. Here, she uses that perspective to challenge societal expectations with long, conversational narratives rather than quick punchlines.

The show’s title comes from a Matthew McConaughey quote that inspired her only tattoo, a tiny “JKL” on her ankle that she got at age forty-one. Kirkman spends much of the hour focusing on the frustrations of being a woman in public, recounting a solo trip to Venice where a ghost tour guide pitied her solitude and insisted on giving her a “love story” tour instead. She also targets the shortcomings of American sex education, recalling how she had to research fingerbanging in her local library’s card catalog, and mocks well-meaning liberal men who support equality in theory but recoil when women discuss menstruation. Critics praised her detailed, narrative style and her willingness to treat uncomfortable personal moments as comedic fodder.