Sheng Wang’s Sweet & Juicy Keeps the Torch of Observational Comedy Burning Bright
If you’re perusing Instagram and Tik Tok for stand-up, the prevailing trend that might clog your feed is crowd work videos, ultra personal confessions in joke form, or the classic heckler-crushing videos. Classic, observational comedy isn’t necessarily what’s in style right now, but, then again, great comedy, especially stand-up comedy inherently questions/bucks trends.
Cue in Sheng Wang, the dulcet tones of his deep voice, and his crisply delivered, finely tuned jokes in his first hour special, Sweet & Juicy. For several years, if you’ve been in the comedy know, you’ve hopefully savored Sheng’s painstakingly crafted material that slightly harkens back to decades past when observational comedy was king. Wang’s deliberate pacing and silky smooth voice sweeten beautifully simple reflections of the world around him.
However, it’s not akin to Jerry Seinfeld or even a somewhat similar-sounding legend, Mitch Hedberg. Wang has an uncanny ability to pick the perfect word that, in of itself, can get a hearty laugh without it being the whole of the punchline or a tag. This bit on posture is just one of many bits throughout Sweet & Juicy that exemplify Weng’s mastery in writing a classic joke and making it slickly feel as though you’re not even listening to a joke. That is, of course, when observational comedy is at its very best form.
Sheng Wang’s Sweet & Juicy is now streaming on Netflix and watching it over and over will be a great way to get through whatever natural disaster you’re having to go through right now.