My Review of "Jo Koy: Comin' in Hot"

I have to admit that I'm not familiar with Jo Koy or his type of comedy. I haven't seen his other specials but Ronnie Chieng made me want to check out other acts that I would never thought of checking. Jo Koy is a Filipino comedian and he's getting a lot of buzz lately. I wanted to check out why.

Much to my ignorance, Jo Koy has been around for quite some time and he's built a pretty big following. After watching his special I can see why. This special sort of felt like a mix between Russell Peters and Aziz Ansari's earlier days. He seems like a guy that I can relate to. He mixes in his cool/calm demeanor with very animated version of himself.

You can tell he has his comedic timing down very well. He's obviously crafted his jokes very well because he knows which parts of the jokes will hit the audience the hardest. He plays upon those parts of the joke and riffs off of them as well.

There's also an air of spontaneity in his jokes as well when he interacts with the audience. This isn't commonly seen in specials but he interacts and remembers the names of people in the audience to play upon the jokes. This is similar to what we've seen in Aziz's special. I like this because it shows that it is a live special and anything can go. It gives us a sense that he's connected to the audience as well.

Earlier jokes seem similar to what Russell Peters does when he plays with the audience. He talks about Asian racial stereotypes and does some pretty impersonations of the different Asian accents. For those that aren't familiar with Asian accents I can confirm that he does pretty good descriptions of accents he demonstrated in this special. It's interesting to hear his interpretations of these accents as well. Now some might not like this type of humor so I'm just warning you so expect them. He's right though we shouldn't be too sensitive to these jokes. Things are what they are. We should own our own stereotypes.

A few of the jokes seem self deprecating of his childhood. He owns his upbringing because he wouldn't be as successful as he is now if it wasn't for the way he was brought up. He talks about his life as a child growing up in a Filipino family. He makes comparisons with Filipino's to Mexicans. This was all funny and interesting. Although he would talk about Filipino cultural exchanges I was still able to identify with some of the things he was talking about. I'm sure other cultures would be able to as well.

Another Aziz similarity that Jo Koy has in his set in this stand-up is that he pretty much threw his son under the bus. He talks about pretty personal stuff about his son to the audience which was hilarious but must also seem extremely embarrassing for is son. Aziz used to do this with some of his family members as well. This was extremely funny and some of them were really laugh out loud moments but I really feel bad for his son after the special was introduced on Netflix.

Overall, Jo Koy's newest Netflix special is really good. I thoroughly enjoyed it from the beginning to the end. I wasn't sure if I'd identify with some of the Filipino jokes but I understood them and most importantly be able to laugh with them. This was a really well done special that I think a lot of people will find funny as well. I would give this special an 8 out of 10. Very enjoyable with some laugh out loud moments. Please Netflix keep this up because your comedy lineup seems to be getting better and better!