Have It All
Netflix · 2024 · 66 min
Taylor Tomlinson wrestles with the anxiety of entering her thirties.
The tension between professional triumph and personal failure is the sweet spot of Taylor Tomlinson’s third hour. Her career is soaring, highlighted by her appointment as host of the late-night show After Midnight after a year spent as the only woman on the list of top-ten highest-grossing comedy tours, but her romantic life remains chaotic. She handles this disconnect with the same rapid-fire, highly rehearsed delivery that made her a theater headliner before she even turned thirty.\n\nFilmed at Capital One Hall in the Washington, D.C. area, the set operates around the anxiety of hitting major milestones. Tomlinson uses her entry into her thirties to probe her friends’ shifting priorities, her struggles with insomnia, and her recently embraced bisexuality. The sequence comparing the emotional labor of dating men to the terrifying stakes of trying to hook up with women stands out as some of her most memorable material, alongside a bit about trying to explain basic empathy to attractive men.\n\nWhile critics noted that the glossy production and arena-ready energy lacked the intimacy of her previous work, her mechanical precision remains impressive. She keeps the pacing incredibly tight, finding humor in the absurdity of self-parenting and the bizarre luxuries she can suddenly afford now that she is wealthy.
The set list
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Nobody wants anybody to have it all
Observing that jealousy prevents people from wishing someone both career and romantic bliss, arguing that if someone has their dream job and soulmate, their parents better be divorced or they should be an orphan.
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Dating as a claw machine
Executing an act-out comparing being single and trying to date to being a stuffed animal picked up and dropped by an arcade claw machine.
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Hugh Jackman and The Music Man Broadway auction
Recounting getting caught up in a post-show Broadway charity auction bidding against an elderly woman and the actor who plays Jake from State Farm.
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Controlled crowd work on insomnia
Asking the audience for unusual sleep tips she has not heard before to deal with her sleep issues.
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Coming out as bisexual and queer siblings
Joking that all of her younger Gen Z siblings are queer and in relationships while she identifies as 'afraid', and commenting on how intimidating it is to try to impress women.
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Anxiety Room (AR) in hospitals
Proposing that hospitals establish an Anxiety Room next to the Emergency Room for non-life-threatening panic situations.
How it plays
- Tone
- Vulnerable, self-aware, sharp, and introspective.
- On stage
- Introspective, vulnerably funny, self-deprecating yet polished, with a vaudevillian tightness to structure and delivery.
- Pace
- Delivered at a fast clip with intricately woven jokes, entering like a rock star atop a neon-lit staircase while remaining grounded.
- About
- success and career trade-offs, dating and singlehood, anxiety and therapy, insomnia and sleep aids, bisexuality and dating women, turning 30
What the critics said
Decider recommended to stream it, praising her for being 'vulnerably funny,' while Paste Magazine described it as an 'engaging but compromised hour' that fell somewhat short of fully balancing her differing worlds.
In the room: Engaged and supportive room dynamic that laughed along and indulged her rock star entrance and controlled crowd interaction.
Backstory
Turning 30, navigating immense career success alongside personal trade-offs, managing anxiety and insomnia, coming out as bisexual, and reflecting on family dynamics and single life.
Details
- Released
- Taped
- 2023, Capital One Hall, Tysons
- Runtime
- 66 min
- Where
- Netflix
- Director
- Kristian Mercado
- Topics
- Before
- Look at You (2022)
- After
- Prodigal Daughter (2026)
More from Taylor Tomlinson
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Prodigal Daughter
Netflix
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Look at You
Netflix
-
Quarter Life Crisis
Netflix
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