Jacqueline Novak: Get on Your Knees

The show started out as this delightful little amuse-bouche of words that quickly turned into this Michelin Star meal of comedy. I devoured every moment, blown away by the pace each course was delivered. The most genius conjuring of vulnerable delights. Scraping my fork along the plate to get every last morsel, I lapped up every word, vigorously washing it down with wine straight from the bottle. Not once was there a missed step or a beat skipped. Delicious! I want more! Everyone should dine on the brilliant soufflé of genius that so easily whipped up by Jacqueline Novak! My compliments to the chef!

After having seen quite a lot of female comics like Isla Schleisinger and Amy Schumer bomb miserably on stage in Netflix specials, I was quite reluctant to click on this. However, I did. Maybe because the subject matter appealed to my lizard brain. Anyways... Jacqueline Novak's attitude and rhythm sure are much different than that of her peers. This is more like a single person theatre than a standup show. I don't even recall how Netflix packaged it but to me it came as a bearable and even entertaining version of that "Why Don't You Like Me?" art house woman rant from an episode of Friends. She performs well. I mean the walking, rope jumping, breathlessly talking on stage. But jeez, this is almost 100 minutes and I stopped at the 83rd. I'm pretty sure the whole thing would be more impactful and even funnier to listen to if only a professional had edited down a third of the source material. It would have become rock-hard material which the audience could handle without a risk of choking on it.

By now you probably know what it's about, if not... It's about sex and especially giving head, blowing the job, fellatio, etc. It's expertly written and very funny. All about one subject but at the same time full of ideas. Excellent so far! However, the pace is so unrelenting, so fast, she hardly can catch her breath (and neither can we) in an unstopped tsunami of words and ideas and similes and it's sometimes hard to keep up, similar to how the spot light cannot keep up with her pacing back and forth on stage continuously. Definitely worth it, be it overly long and extremely tiring because of the sheer volume of text.

I love stand up and have fairly broad tastes. For me, the greatest comics are among the smartest people walking among us. They see things most of us can't, and they report on them in creative, original ways. This lady is very, very, very sharp. While I expect that this show will not resonate with a lot of people, I think it reflects pure genius. This is easily one of the most original specials I've seen and it was better on a second viewing. She speaks very quickly with barely a break so you miss some of her jokes on the first listen. Her body language, gestures and facial expressions are priceless. I don't know how I'd never heard of her before but now I love her!

It may be hard for some to keep up with the pace of this genius. This must be the most words per minute and jokes per minute that I've seen in a comedy special. Of course we are talking about some very adult themes here. Some very graphic descriptions of human anatomy, but we're all just human. She really spells out what so many of us have been thinking all along though. Quite verbose, Jacqueline moves along at pace that may be difficult for some to keep up with. But if you're able to put your phone down for a moment and keep up, you are in for quite a ride. I promise you have never heard an hour and a half conversation, mostly about BJ's (but not entirely) that was this intelligent.

Based on the description and the trailer, I figured I'd give the show a try. I tried to stick with it, but the constant back and forth pacing across the stage made it too hard too watch. The pacing was so annoying it districted from the actual material. Someone should have warned her about this prior to the taping. I quit watching after about 5 minutes after I fast forwarded about 20 minutes to see if maybe the pacing stopped. It didn't, so off it went. Too bad because I always like trying out comedians I haven't seen before. Based on the trailer, the material itself was really funny. Maybe I'll give it another try down the road.

The main purpose of standup should be to get laughs..right? In that sense this special wasn't successful. I didn't laugh a single time. I'm guessing the audience laughter came from some sunk-cost fallacy mindset on their part. Okay, so it wasn't funny. Well maybe I could look at this more as a "one woman show" than a standup special. Maybe she'd have interesting things to say? Turns out, no. Her act is the same sex-obsessed act that a lot of heterosexual women comedians tend to focus on, she just does it in a very long winded pretentious way. She also has this knack for pacing on the stage, and combine that with her whiny sing-songy voice and I was just "no thanks" on this one. Imagine the most boring person you've ever met trying to be sexy, and it'll give you some idea what watching this was like. I will never watch another standup act by this person. No way.

Its true this may be closer to a one man show than a comedy performance, but this touch of theatre over a comedic styled narration demonstrated a refreshing take on what it means to give a solo performance in the age of streaming. The onslaught of words left no time for appreciating each joke, but it also left no time to feel off-put as she navigates socially awkward topics. It feels like a natural progression in the feminist narrative of taking control of ones life story and casting oneself as the hero even in the face of failures. As other comedians simply look for us to laugh off our failures we can appreciate that looking for poetic dignity through failure is a useful coping skill that we aren't often presented with in this genre. I felt like it could have almost fallen apart and felt too desperate in what it was reaching for, but the closing of the show was the cherry on top and solidifies her as a great show writer and an authentic performer. This style may feel off putting from what we are used to in the comedian genre, but I think Novak's critics will look back and realize they were asking Mozart to play less notes - Bravo!

Brilliant and unique. Worth a watch. Definitely didn't laugh out loud but a new twist on stand up. The entire skit is about one topic that you can guess based on the title. She'll keep you on the edge of your seat in ways that you honestly have no idea what she'll say next. I've never seen stand up spoken so fast and poetic. She's a very fast spoken individual but very poetic in her way to weave in and out of storylines for 1.5 hours. It will be interesting to see what she comes out with next. You can tell she's got much more to share as she's got one of racing minds but she's well thought out.

The only reason I keep my Netflix subscription is watching new standup specials. We ended 2023 strong with Ricky Gervais' new special, started with Dave Chappelle's new special... and then went down fast with Pete Dvaidson's incredibly boring new special. But just when I though it couldn't get worse, I saw this new special by Jacqueline Novak. This is literally the first time I'm hearing her name and I was excited to see a new female standup comedian, while I'm waiting for the new Taylor Tomlinson special. My rule is to see at least 1/3 of any new standup comedian's special before I make any judgement. Let me tell you, it was very, very hard to stand through 1/3 (or 30 minutes) of this woman's material. For 30 straight minutes it was all * & * jokes but it wasn't really "outrageous" or "disguisting", it was just plain awkward. See, when Amy Schumer does it, it can actually be funny (when it's not just that, of course), but Jacqueline Novak can't make it funny. She's pacing through her material while pacing nervously on the stage the whole time, which is very tiresome. I have no idea what the audience finds funny in all of this or is Netflix just using a laugh track but there are no actual jokes in this material. All in all, imagine Hannah Gadsby lack of talent and condescending boredom, combined with Amy Schumer's bodily functions jokes and you'll get "Get On Your Knees". My advice - do not waste your time on this. If you just really want to defend female comedians and complain about the patriarchy or something, feel free to mark this review as "not helpful" but still, please - don't waste your time with it. Just tell people she's a comedy genius and that everyone who dislikes her is a sexist or something and doesn't understand the modern woman's struggles or something.