Locked Up

Alan Saldaña is pacing a stage in Monterrey, trying to make a comedy club routine work in a room where the closest audience member is practically in another time zone. Recorded in late 2020 under strict pandemic protocols, the crowd is pushed so far back that the atmosphere feels more like a drive-in theater than an intimate comedy venue. This distance forces Saldaña to lean heavily on his physical expressions and vocal projection to bridge the physical gap, transforming his usual fast-talking club style into a theatrical performance.

The material itself leans heavily into his transition into domestic life. The Monterrey native focuses on the mundane frustrations of long-term marriage and parenting, detailing the immediate aftermath of childbirth and the dry spell that follows. While his previous Netflix outing, Mi Vida de Pobre, dealt with the struggles of working-class survival, this hour is firmly rooted in the middle-class exhaustion of raising children.

He moves through stories about his son, opinions on music, and a routine about Jehovah’s Witnesses knocking on doors that manages to find a weird angle on the number 666. Some of the cruder jokes feel a bit dated, drawing mixed reactions from international viewers who watched the translated version on Netflix. The local fanbase, however, got the familiar regional style they expected from the Monterrey comic.