in the style of comedy that you present

as opposed to what Conan O'Brien presents?

I mean, I think we're exactly the same.

If he ever retires there's just like

this knack (speaker drowned by laughter)

(laughs)

waiting in the wings.

(laughing)

(upbeat music)

[Narrator] A lot of work goes into a short,

late night stand upset.

Join me, JP Buck as I spotlight the comedians

who came up with some of my favorite point sets.

This is, The setup.

[ Announcer] Please welcome back to the show.

Very funny, Jena Friedman.

(upbeat music)

Your first said focused on,

I mean, it was sexual assault and took on Nazis.

Yeah.

And I would actually say,

that this one was even tougher to pull off.

This one was a lot tougher to pull off weirdly enough.

Yes.

I think the last one was a little,

it started off a little delicate.

I'm actually half man

(crowd laughing)

on my dad's side.

(crowd laughing)

So,

with this one the subject matters so morbid

and I couldn't even imagine it ever going on late night,

but I think you were like, let's try it.

(upbeat music)

I think as female comics,

it's such like we're all so like what do we wear?

How do we dress?

How do we look cool, but not intimidating.

And how do we look likable but not like schlubby?

All these dumb things that take up space.

My only regret,

I wish I had worn like a pastel color shirt

or just something a little softer.

I feel like wearing black, talking about murder

just like there's a lot.

That hairstyle was so nice.

And she put my hair back.

Cause I had it in just like a ponytail.

And she was like,

don't do this cause it'll look weird.

And the first thing I did just out of nerves, it's so dumb.

I'm sorry I'm talking about that.

But that was what I was thinking about

as I'm like delivering massage and murder.

I'm like, what does my hair look like?

(laughing)

(air whooshing)

Hi it's so nice to be here.

The news is pretty depressing lately.

So to lighten the mood, I've started watching, "True crime."

(crowd laughing)

You've all seen "Making a murder."

If you haven't, it's a documentary

about how a woman's death made so much money for Netflix.

(crowd laughing)

and then the podcasts, Their cereal,

My favorite murder, Missing and Murdered, Up and Vanished,

Wine and Crime, White Wine, True Crime, True Crime Brewery,

True Crime all the time, What the crime, Crime town,

Crime junkie, Cold Case killer

and things to live and die in LA.

Someone knows something, Man in the Window,

Body and the more

(crowds cheering and clapping)

Southern crime, True-Crime, Junk women's solving crime

which I'm actually on pretty cool.

These are just a couple

of this American death doesn't exist yet

but that's gonna be my retirement plan.

How long could you have actually made that joke?

At the time I had like a whole page back front

and back of just different podcasts

and I had done it in different country

I did it in Edinburgh.

And so it just like, the timing is slightly different

and every crowd is slightly different.

So, and then there are some podcasts

like Southern Fried True Crime

which is just a funny phrase.

So it's like, but the timing always was different

depending on the crowd when to get out of it and when not?

But yeah.

I mean, I think I could have done a five minute set.

(laughing)

Which it just goes to prove your point.

(upbeat music)

I didn't realize how obsessed America was

with dead white women in particular,

until it occurred to me

that Ted Bundy has two Netflix specials

and yeah I'm jealous.

I don't know if you've seen the Ted Bundy tapes.

I keep wanting to call them the Ted Bundy mixed tapes

something about the graphic design.

It's just so seventies.

So retro it almost,

it's like they want to make you a nostalgic for an era

when men could just murder women and get away with it

because there was no Google earth.

And then

(crowds laughing)

I tend to do that sometimes where you throw out your line

and then quickly move on

and almost don't allow them to laugh.

Is that something that you do on purpose?

Is that like a conscious decision?

I think being a female in comedy for 15 years

you just can't ever expect the audience

to be rooting for you.

So I think, or maybe just my own personal experience.

I pad it with so many jokes that I just am like,

blah, blah blah. Okay.

Laugh, or don't laugh, I don't care.

I'm like, I'm going, I'm still going.

Like you don't, you know

I never just walk on stage and people will be like

yeah, you know, like it's very different.

It's like defensive comedy.

The scripted movie on Netflix,

starring Zac Efron written and directed by men

where they made the craziest person in that movie.

Carole Ann Boone.

The woman who dated Ted Bundy while he was in prison.

They made Carole look so much crazier

than a man who murdered 30 people.

(crowd laughing)

And I was watching that thinking,

Carole Ann is not crazy.

She's just a woman dating in her thirties.

(crowd laughing and clapping)

Carole Ann's crazy?

Carole Ann's crazy.

Really?

What does that say about all the men outside of prison?

She would have dated, but Ted Bundy was nicer to her.

(crowd laughing)

There's a lot there.

And I really love that.

I just heard my friend Ruth left.

(both laughing)

I see where your focus is.

No, my focus is not in the content

because I sit with the content for so long.

My focus on the content for like six months or however long

it takes you to write this chunk

that when it's time to perform it

the last thing you want you're in autopilot.

Carole Ann care Bear just wanted to meet a guy

who wasn't gonna ghost her after she slept with him.

It's hard to ghost someone from jail.

(crowd laughing)

unless you're Jeff Epstein.

(crowd shouting and cheering)

it's not like he killed himself, you guys.

(crowd laughing)

Backstage before the show,

you still were tinkering with the wording of that joke.

I mean, I wrote that Epstein tag

like five minutes before I went on stage.

Remember I was like, it's funny?

(laughs)

Which I wanna say this is a compliment.

That my favorite thing about this set, is that tag.

It really is.

I mean, the tags are supposed to be disposable

in front of you easily throw away.

And that tag is really for me.

What makes this it's a cherry on top of this set,

(laughing)

I mean, rarely do you wanna get groans from an audience,

But come on. I got to say, that's gotta be pretty.

I think groans are honestly we could get into it,

but I think groans are cooler than laughs.

Because especially when you do club comedy for a long time,

there's a rhythm and a formula to getting laughs.

If you can invoke, invoke, evoke, I don't know.

Another kind of visceral reaction from people.

I love groans.

I'll take a groan cause that means they're still with you.

They're just uncomfortable

which is a good, which is really why I do what I do.

(both laughing)

The docu series was even worse

because there was all this archival footage

of Ted Bundy in the courtroom

with all the police officers and Ted was just killing it.

(crowd laughing)

That's comedian slang for slaughtering.

He murdered in that courtroom,

he basically slayed.

He had all the cops just doubled over in stitches

laughing at not even jokes and the lights were on

and his audience was giving him way more love

than you guys are giving me for this bit.

(audience laughing)

I love that that's pre-planned.

Cause you know what's (indistinct) this.

I know that every audience I did this set for, freaked out

and also this set was like in my hour show,

"Miscarriage of Justice."

And it was like towards the end.

So I had never done this set just cold.

Like you don't know me.

Here or this guy?

The guy never told her.

Ted Bundy were alive today,

He'd be on his third Netflix special.

It would be his apology tour.

(audience laughing)

And he'd be traveling around the country

being like,

'When my friends and I realized it was wrong to kill women,

we found some (Indistinct) about it.'

(audience laughing)

You and I know what news it comes next.

Forgetting the person I'm even teasing lightly.

It is crazy to me all the kind of meet you people

who get apology tours

and I just kind of wanted to tease them about it.

Or I'm just saying what he said, you know,

but with Ted Bundy.

I didn't appreciate how the cops painted Ted Bundy

as a criminal mastermind.

He wasn't a criminal mastermind.

He was white and they weren't looking for him.

(audience laughing and clapping)

I'm not saying cops are racist,

just that maybe cops are as racist as comedians are funny.

(audience laughing)

Not all comedians are funny,

but if someone's like I'm a comedian and you were like,

Oh, you're probably pretty funny.

(audience laughing)

(speaking faintly)

Where you just wait

and you're like, can you just make the connection?

You don't have to do it for you.

(laughing)

They made it.

I mean, it's also crazy to see that joke in this moment.

That's like, ah,

Ted Bundy also not an evil genius.

Here's how I know Ted Bundy wasn't that smart.

He was a Republican politician in Utah

as he started murdering women.

And if he were really ahead of the curve,

he would've just stayed the course of politics,

risen to the top,

and then killed so many more women with his policies.

(laughing)