Love To Hate It

Ronny Chieng starts his third Netflix special by detailing the clinical humiliation of trying to have a baby, specifically the sheer lack of dignity found in a fertility clinic’s collection room. It is a classic Chieng opening: cynical, sharp-tongued, and completely unsentimental about the major milestones of adulthood. Filmed over a sold-out five-night run at the historic Hawai’i Theatre in Honolulu during the summer of 2024, the set represents a busy year for the comic that also saw him co-hosting The Daily Show and starring in Hulu’s Interior Chinatown. The material moves seamlessly from medical clinic mishaps to broader societal targets, including the online grifters targeting men’s self-help and the gullibility of older generations who fall for basic internet scams. Chieng is at his most effective when his signature aggression finds a vulnerability, which is clearest in the closing bit centering on his late father’s habit of quietly keeping tabs on him via Twitter. In a dark twist, Chieng reconstructs the timestamps to realize that the last message his father ever read was a tweet calling baby boomers on the platform total losers, keeping the show grounded in a dry, unsentimental reality.