REVIEW: Maria Bamford's Old Baby

Are you tired of the same old stand up special with a comedian holding a microphone and standing solo on a stage telling the latest Donald Trump joke? I know am.

If you want something different, you need to watch Maria Bamford’s Old Baby: A Special Special on Netflix. Who doesn’t love a title that makes fun of the mentally ill?

I’ve written about Maria Bamford before because I feel as if we are kindred spirits in a way. She actually says the words and makes the sounds that I imagine my brain communicates to my mouth.  If I were more mentally ill than I actually am, I feel like I might be half as good as Maria Bamford.

At the beginning, I didn’t know what was going on. She is talking to different groups of people in different settings. Eventually, I realized that this actually was the special. She was just breaking it down into different parts that she said to different groups.

I should’ve known that this wasn’t going to be just a comedian talking on stage. Maria did a special from her parents’ living room once. The audience was her friends and family. This might just be the way she operates and is what makes her feel most comfortable.

Maria talked about her husband all throughout the special. Comedians talk about their lives and she just got married. He appears in the special a couple times and their chemistry is too cute to deny. Unless you look at me and my husband. We ooze compatibility.

One thing I love about Maria is that I really do not understand the words that she says. Her ever- changing voices and range make it difficult to know what word she actually used. But it’s totally OK. I still get the jokes and if I don’t, I’m still laughing because I don’t understand.

Maria’s openness about her mental illness has been a major focus of her recent stand-up appearances and her TV show Lady Dynamite. (This show is also amazing as well.) As someone who has struggled with mental illness since I slipped out of the womb, it’s nice to know that other people are as fucked up as I am. We need to talk about it more. I need to talk about it more.

I can’t tell what my favorite part is about, but once you see the ending of this special 1 of 3 things might happen. You might pee yourself. Don’t worry. This is totally normal especially if you are a 36-year-old woman with low bladder control. You might die. Just simply die from how good it is.

Lastly, you might think that it has been done before. It probably has, but it has never been done like THIS before. The ending of this special made me say, “I wish I had thought to do that!” This was definitely a special special.