‘The Honeymoon Stand Up Special’ On Netflix: Natasha Leggero And Moshe Kasher Consummate Their Comedy

Ancient stand-up comedy adage: Get married, receive one new hour of ready-made material. Make a baby? One more new hour.

But what happens when two comedians marry each other? Who gets the hour? Natasha Leggero and Moshe Kasher share custody of their literal and figurative comedy baby, which arrives in a trio of half-hours on Netflix called The Honeymoon Stand Up Special. It works great both as a touring act and as a filmed collection of episodes. They play off each other in their individual half-hours, and exhibit exquisite chemistry in their first recorded effort as a comedy duo in the third and final episode, “The Couples Roast,” which finds them inviting other couples onstage from the audience.

They actually performed together, sort of, in the 2016 Showtime special, SXSW Comedy with Natasha Leggero, where she hosted and he closed out the show. They returned a year later to that same stage in Austin for their Netflix debut as husband and wife.

Although Leggero jokes in her half-hour that she’s “still in the abortion zone” of her pregnancy, she delivered their baby girl this February. While pregnant, though, she remained more obsessed and amazed by who drives around with Trump bumper stickers, and how some of her relatives back in Illinois probably should never reproduce at all.

A closing routine reflects both the power of the #MeToo movement, as she walks into the crowd to ask women to share their eyewitness testimony of men who dared masturbate in public. How many women do you think raised their hands to volunteer stories? More than my male readers are guessing.

Leggero then introduces Kasher onstage to launch his half-hour (aka Episode 2). His episode not only complements but also compliments his wife’s. As he notes of their stand-up marriage: “We’re the same with one difference. She’s a comic. I’m a comic. But I’m a man, she’s a woman. But the way people treat the two of us online, or wherever, very f—ing different.”

He illustrates such by comparing the Twitter mentions they typically receive. “I am lucky if once a year a girl in Iowa Tweets at me, like, ‘I’ve got a comedy crush on your podcast, sir,'” he jokes. His wife, on the other hand, gets bombarded with mountains of massively gross men commenting on her looks and propositioning her. It’s an ugly truth. But Kasher lightens the load with an act-out that calls back to and responds to an observation Leggero had made in her set.

Kasher lets us in on his family background, too, growing up with deaf parents, poor in Oakland, with a mother who despite her hearing loss seemed intent and intensely interested in teaching her son how to become a man. With all of the sexual awkwardness a 13-year-old would never wish upon himself.

Both Leggero and Kasher share a talent for talking about inappropriate topics in a tone and style that throws off their audiences. She likes to carry the air of a socialite while saying low-class things; he will suggest the opposite of engaging in taboo, but deliver the lines so quickly and intellectually that he can fool the audience into thinking they’re agreeing to the taboo.

They’re both very quick on their feet, witerally.

Which makes the third installment work like an episode of The Marriage Ref, only funny and more spontaneous. After a rat-a-tat repartee in which they describe Leggero’s conversion process from Catholicism to Judaism, and their retelling of their very traditional Jewish wedding ceremony, they still had time to invite four young couples up from the audience to gently rib and roast them as so-called “relationship experts.”

The comedians nimbly tackle their audiences’ pet peeves about each other with quickly improvised solutions. Even if their questioning could just as easily have turned into dark interrogations.

While talking with one such couple, Kasher paused to interject: “A lot happened just there. I want to say, we’re not really relationship counselors.”

But they are really funny comedians, and even funnier together.

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 The Honeymoon Stand Up Special on Netflix