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Promotional art for Loopholes
Cover image credit: Promotional image via Prime Video

Loopholes

Kate Willett

Tubi · 2024 · 44 min

A dry stand-up set about the messy reality of modern feminism.

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Kate Willett has no interest in selling a sanitized version of modern feminism. On stage, she is much more interested in the messy, sometimes humiliating reality of trying to live up to progressive ideals while still wanting to have a functioning sex life. Her focus is the gap between the theories people post online and the compromises they actually make in relationships.

Filmed at the intimate Triad Theater on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, Loopholes was released by Comedy Dynamics in April 2024. By this stage in her career, Willett had established herself through appearances on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert and Netflix’s The Comedy Lineup, alongside writing for the Beavis and Butt-Head revival and co-hosting the political podcast Reply Guys.

During the set, she works through topics like pandemic domestication, boomer marriages, and the childhood game MASH. One of her strongest segments breaks down the co-optation of feminist language by men who use progressive jargon to cover up bad behavior. She also reflects on her youth, recalling a homophobic Christian camp she attended as a teenager, contrasting it with her adult bisexual reality.

The set list

6 bits

  1. Staying true to oneself and principles in an unsatisfying relationship with a sexist partner

    Explores the difficulty of maintaining feminist and anti-capitalist ideals when living through the messy compromises of real-life relationships.

  2. Attending a homophobic Christian camp as an adolescent

    Self-deprecatingly notes that the camp made being a bisexual woman sound vastly cooler than the actual reality.

  3. Unwittingly manifesting the plot of the musical RENT

    Reflects on the realization that her adult life mirrored her adolescent fantasy.

  4. Feminism's popularity in the Obama era and men co-opting the movement

    Critiques marketable, superficial feminism and contrasts it with active, messy movements for a better world.

  5. Analysis of incels, boomer marriages, and the game MASH

    Approached with dry delivery and sharp cultural critique.

  6. Material on threesomes and manspreading

    Repurposed sparingly as Easter eggs from her 2017 album 'Glass Gutter'.

How it plays

Tone
Dry, sharp, frank, insightful, and conversational.
On stage
Matter-of-fact, laidback, world-weary, critical yet self-deprecating.
Pace
Conversational, natural flow with dry delivery.
About
sex and feminism, relationships, dating and politics, bisexuality, anti-capitalism, incels

What the critics said

Universally praised by critics as seamless, astutely observed, and satisfyingly funny, celebrating her frankness, sharp intellect, and nuanced leftist and feminist commentary.

In the room: Intimate and warm, feeling like being at a bar with a hilarious friend sharing life experiences.

Summed up from reviews, articles and listings. Sources: comedydynamics.com, themoviedb.org, moviefone.com, justthecast.com, pastemagazine.com, weownthelaughs.com, thecomedybureau.com.

Backstory

Material written primarily in the one to two years following pandemic quarantine, examining the messy contradictions between feminist/socialist ideals and lived reality in the United States.

Details

Released
Taped
The Triad Theater, New York City
Runtime
44 min
Where
Tubi
Director
Jay Chapman
Topics

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