The Standups: Rachel Feinstein

Rachel Feinstein’s best comedy is always rooted in the voices she can pull out of her throat. In this brief, sharp set, she builds a detailed portrait of her parents, shifting effortlessly into her aggressively liberal, jewelry-loaded mother and her dry father. She bypasses generic family dinner gripes to construct a specific, theatrical dynamic, mimicking her mother’s grand, social-worker pronunciations with absolute precision.

The set was recorded at the Globe Theatre in Los Angeles as part of the second season of Netflix’s anthology series, The Standups, released in March 2018. Feinstein was already a respected regular on the club circuit and a frequent face in Judd Apatow projects like Crashing and Trainwreck. Here, she is given just under thirty minutes, and she uses it to condense her signature character work. Beyond her parents, she mimics predatory street harassment and the weird social pressures of long-term intimacy.

Critics and audiences received the set as a highlight of the season. While some online commentators noted that she spent nearly the entire half-hour mocking her mother, her cartoonish physical and vocal mimicry kept the short format feeling energetic.