Since the release of her second Netflix special, Alonzo has appeared on television most frequently as team captain on the revamped Pictionary competition show. You may have also seen her as a recurring guest on The Talk, in a couple of episodes of the Netflix comedy The Upshaws, or as a guest judge on the Netflix cooking competition show Is It Cake? She was also a consulting producer on the short-lived NBC comedy Happy's Place, starring Reba McEntire.
This special finds Alonzo firmly in her happy place, but wondering how she can teach her family to find theirs too, taking them on trips to Hawaii, Disneyland, and the Grand Canyon.
Director: Page Hurwitz
Writer: Cristela Alonzo
Star: Cristela Alonzo
A decade after her own ABC comedy, Alonzo has become a powerful voice for Latino comedians, and with that, has entered her George Lopez era (free).
In a funny (and ironic) twist, a la Andrew Santino, who released his new special "White Noise" on Hulu earlier this month, Alonzo includes a joke about "white noise" in her hour. But her joke, unlike his, focuses exclusively on whiteness: "I have my white noise machine, which is just Karens yelling at me, 'You live here?!'"
Alonzo has never shied away from her heritage as a first-generation Mexican American, and in this hour, she opens and closes her special with big statements, whether joking that her glass of water onstage has no ice or covering herself with a Mexican serape blanket at the end, adorned with the 50 stars of the American flag.
Meanwhile, she jokes about having "money for therapy," even if her poor, Catholic, Latina upbringing makes her wary of self-care. Even more so when she describes in detail what happened when she realized that ordering a body scrub at the spa wasn't as simple or straightforward as she thought. Or maybe too straightforward? Alonzo's body insecurity is evident as she depicts her movements through the spa, from the locker room to the jacuzzi and then her ordeal with the masseuse.
Later, she uses humor when describing her first night with a Fitbit during the pandemic. It didn't go well.
Despite all her insecurity, she wasn't so worried about adhering to traditional gender roles, as she describes growing up wearing her older siblings' hand-me-downs and preferring to play He-Man over My Little Pony.
And she won't take any jokes about not having children or a husband at 46. "It's none of your business," she says, adding jokingly, "I've already raised children." From her sister—that is, the one who showed up at Cristela's door with her three children after leaving her husband.
Furthermore, since her mother passed away, Cristela has taken on the role of family matriarch—even more so since she began enjoying television and streaming success about twelve years ago. In trying to teach her siblings how to have fun, she realized not only that they had never been on a real vacation, but also that Cristela herself, despite all her work traveling as a stand-up comedian, had never traveled for fun. So she took them to Hawaii first. Why there? "Because the Brady Bunch went there!"
Detailing their recent trips to Hawaii, Disneyland, and the Grand Canyon, she realizes how little they had allowed themselves to dream, and how far they've come as a family, both literally and figuratively. All with jokes about how their own ideas of vacation contrasted with those of the white people they saw around them.
Alonzo reminds his Dallas audience that he began his comedy career there and that his family still calls San Juan, a town on the Texas border, home. Throughout their time there, they learned to work hard and integrate, but "they never teach us how to live hard" and find joy. That's why his mother, an undocumented immigrant, worked double shifts as a cook and never complained, despite earning only $150 a week and walking past the local movie theater, never even getting in to enjoy a film.
Alonzo even pauses to wonder aloud: why would he tell us all this on a comedy show? "It's because we need to hear it," he says, adding that "sometimes you need to hear it to feel like you have permission to do it." Even when it comes to having fun. Especially in times like these.
So when he's there on stage in Dallas, reminding us that he just filmed his third Netflix special, in a state and nation where people wear Jesus crucifixes while trying to separate boys and men named Jesus from their families, he's not kidding when he says, "This is the time to speak openly."
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