Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Leslie Jones: Time Machine’ On Netflix, Learning To Enjoy The Present

Fresh off her five-year run on Saturday Night Live, Leslie Jones offers up her first Netflix comedy special, Time Machine, in which the comedian reflects on life as a young woman in her 20s, 30s and 40s before fully accepting life as a 50-something.

LESLIE JONES: TIME MACHINE: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: What a decade it was for Jones.

A former college basketball player, Jones released a comedy special on Showtime in 2010 that came and went as if it were just another regular-season game in the middle of a long road trip.

Still a virtually unknown touring comedian in her mid-40s, Jones scored a small role in Chris Rock’s movie, Top Five, and made a big enough impact for Rock to recommend her to Lorne Michaels when SNL infamously held unprecedented auditions for black women at the end of 2013. Hired initially as a writer, Jones made her first onscreen appearance at the Weekend Update desk in May 2014 and never looked back. At 47, she became the oldest person hired as an SNL cast member. Then she became a Ghostbuster. Then her live-Tweeting of the Olympics got her a gig covering the Olympics. Similarly, her fandom of HBO’s Game of Thrones has resulted in that show’s co-creators, David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, directing Jones on her Netflix special.

All of which leads to, and is summed up by this opening joke: “Man, every time I come out and a bunch of white people screaming at me, I just can’t. I felt like I made it!” The audience cheers. “I am white people famous!”

What Comedy Specials Will It Remind You Of?: Upon finding two young white women in their 20s sitting front and center, Jones goes off on them as if she’d been possessed by the ghost of Sam Kinison, shouting at them: “You in your 20s?!?!?!?!?” Jones later steps into the audience to get right up in a man’s face to prevail upon him to respect his woman more. Kinison was barely 30 when he perfected his schtick, carried over from his days as a young preacher. At 52, Jones’s screams come from years of pent-up frustration at being single. But by continuing to counterbalance that frustration with large doses of brash confidence and positive energy, her screams serve more as cheerleading than as preaching.

By the way, seeing one of those young women in the front row still wearing her VIP laminate badge around her neck, you cannot help but remember, good on Benioff and Weiss for leaving those shots in the picture! These guys. They bring nothing new, directing-wise, to the comedy special genre. With so many audience reaction shots, they actually make her special seem more ordinary. Which is a shame, albeit predictable following their other work from 2019.

Memorable Jokes: But Benioff and Weiss cannot ruin any of Jones’s jokes. Right from the beginning, she lets us know she is keeping it 100 in her 50s. “Y’all know I don’t care. I got my knee brace on the outside. I don’t give a f—.”

In her one nod to GoT, Jones describes younger versus older womanhood as the difference between finding angels or dragons underneath those panties. “When your angel turn into a dragon, that’s when you’re gonna know how to f—.” The audience cheers. “All the dragons.” Jones points to those cheering. “You know what I’m saying? Dragon keep the dick warm (exhales). Dracarys! (exhales) Winter’s coming, bitch.”

Benioff and Weiss do keep the camera focused on Jones long enough, too, for her to re-enact her go-to strategy for catching Prince’s attention at a Grammys after-party back in the 1990s. For more than two minutes, Jones keeps the microphone dangling down by her knee brace, just dancing. The only sounds we hear here come from the audience laughing and cheering her on.

She pivots from this scene into a description of her 30s and later, when she realizes she’ll attract neither Prince nor “Prince Charming,” and remind us she has not grown into a “Sleeping Beauty” herself, which she illustrates with a re-enactment of her nightly routine, sleep apnea and all.

Her 40s were all about denial, and Jones pokes fun at herself for trying to think that 42 could be the new 22. Which reminds me that her 2010 Showtime special provides videotaped evidence to back her up.

Our Take: After describing her 20s, 30s, 40s and her presently single situation, Jones closes with a bit that inspired the title of her Netflix hour. “I wish I had a time machine, like you know, to go back and tell the 20-year-old self, ‘Hey, it’s gonna be OK.'”

If you’ve been listening, however, then you’d already know that Jones had taken her own advice she’s been dispensing to the young women watching her, and having the time of her life growing up, despite her lack of fame or fortune or even love.

So why would or should she take her advice, then?

Probably because it all turns out quite better than OK for Jones. In fact, she stops not once but twice to catch herself mid-act, and remark, “This is so fun.”

Our Call: STREAM IT. Giving Jones an hour or more in the spotlight affords her the opportunity to shine in a way she never could on SNL, even if appearing on that variety series gave her this moment in the first place. If any moment in her hour symbolizes the whole, it’s when Jones, after describing how difficult it is for any man to date her, fusses with one of her eyelashes, then decides to flick it off, then the other, onto the stage floor. “If you can’t ride the whole time, get off!”

Sean L. McCarthy works the comedy beat for his own digital newspaper, The Comic’s Comic; before that, for actual newspapers. Based in NYC but will travel anywhere for the scoop: Ice cream or news. He also tweets @thecomicscomic and podcasts half-hour episodes with comedians revealing origin stories: The Comic’s Comic Presents Last Things First.

Watch Leslie Jones: Time Machine on Netflix