A dissection of Ali Wongs "Baby Cobra" special
An interesting visual examination of Ali Wong’s stand-up comedy special Baby Cobra.
If you take a step back, Ali’s routine is structured around three cohesive ideas: getting older, marriage, and pregnancy.
Let’s put this into context. If you’re studying theatre, literature, or film, you make sense of the work by breaking down its plot or form.
In film, for example, the smallest, irreducible unit is the “beat,” described by screenwriting instructor Robert McKee as “an exchange of behavior in action/reaction.”
Those small pieces—the beats—build a scene...
...and scenes build an act. We analyze the division and subdivision of a story to understand what it’s about.
And we find that we can do this with Ali Wong’s routine. Unlike some stand-up, it adds up into something bigger. She’s telling not just 100 individual jokes, but a story that is deliberately arranged, much like a comedy film or a TV series.
The laughter climax is meta funny. For 50 minutes, Ali has built a universe, with each joke expanding the audience’s understanding of her world-view.
The laughter climax connects the major themes of her routine, from how she met her husband to her philosophy on working. When the punchline hits, the seemingly disparate stories snap together.
You get the same feeling when reaching the end of a great Seinfeld episode or any multi-plot story—the delight in seeing all the plotlines converge into one (and realizing that the storyteller was crafting a deeper idea all along).
Watch/read the full piece here. (h/t George Yanakeas)
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