Time Machine

Leslie Jones has never been a comic to hide her age, her exhaustion, or her physical limits. She walks onto the stage wearing a knee brace right over her denim and spends the hour screaming life advice at anyone under forty. The hook is her willingness to yell directly into the faces of millennials in the front row, warning them about the physical decay of middle age and the sheer embarrassment of their current outfits. She treats her fifties as a hard-won vantage point for looking back at her younger self and shaking her head.

Filmed at the Warner Theatre in Washington, D.C., the 2020 special served as her first major project after leaving Saturday Night Live. Bizarrely, it was directed by Game of Thrones creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, though their presence is mostly invisible, allowing her loud physical delivery to take center stage. Jones works the room with the loose warmth of a club comic, leading a Tevin Campbell singalong, demonstrating proper hygiene for men, and recounting a failed attempt to seduce Prince at an afterparty. Her physical commitment to stories about battling sleep apnea or fighting an ex at a dog park keeps the crowd locked in.