The latest episode from the comedy show “Lizzy Hoo: Hoo Cares!” has been streaming on Amazon Prime since April 6, 2023. Directed by Catherine Van Der Wolf, the show gives us a peek into the lives of Lizzy Hoo and her family and some notions about following our dreams. For those who are unfamiliar with Lizzy Hoo, she started her journey as a comedian in 2017 and quickly rose to prominence. In the national RAW comedy competition, Lizzy Hoo became the NSW State Finalist, and the next year she was invited to the Just for Laughs Festival at the Sydney Opera House to perform. Now let us dive into the episode that was aired on Amazon Prime Video.
Now, if you look at the episode, Lizzy’s content mostly revolves around her family, her life at the office, her personal take on chasing dreams, her relationship with her family members, and of course, her own self. She stitches all these portions together beautifully to provide the audience with a comforting story that reminds you of a home-cooked meal. She opened her show by announcing that she had quit her day job to pursue full-time comedy, but eventually the Pandemic and COVID disrupted several things. She even compared COVID to a “dude,” as it took “two years to fix himself.” Then she starts to talk about Big Chan Hoo, her father, who loves to call Lizzy all the time, and how she and her brothers have been calling him Chan since their high school days, debasing their culture and hierarchy. Then she introduces her “White mom” into the context and tells a bit about their conversation, where her mother said, “Just trying not to die,” when asked how she was doing. By introducing these two senior family members first, she tries to highlight how hard it has been for old people during the Pandemic.
Lizzy then tells the audience she has said even more bizarre things to her mother than giving the news of her quitting the job to pursue comedy. Once, Lizzy said to her mother that she and her friends bought a van for $500 and decided to go on a trip from Canada to Mexico. Her mother not only supported this but also was a little unimpressed, as she had hitchhiked parts of Southeast Asia in her younger days, which is how she met Lizzy’s father. Lizzy mockingly shares that her mother believes it is not a memorable trip unless it leaves you “with a husband and three children,” a comment on which the audience bursts out in laughter.
Then she comments about how her family talks openly about death and how she was introduced to this idea at an early age. Her family members once discussed throwing her mother off a bridge because she does not have funeral insurance. Lizzy then said that when she was 4 years old, her parents decided to send her to Malaysia to visit one of her dying grandparents. The idea was touching yet heavy for a 4-year-old, but what was supposed to be a mourning trip became a trip of a lifetime for 4-year-old Lizzy. There were numerous beautiful pictures of this trip in a photo album that was named “Chan and Liz Trip to Malaysia When Nanny Died.” Then she mentions to the audience that when she was asked to write about her happiest memory as a child in her acting classes, she wrote the following story regarding her trip to visit her dying grandparent. Then she mockingly says that if someone really wants to enjoy a good comedy show, they must enroll themselves in some adult acting classes.
Lizzy then swiftly shifts her content to office culture, where she defines offices as “weird little ecosystems.” She mocks one of her colleagues from her previous job for having a value pack of Metamucil and also comments on the gender disparity and lack of personal space one often faces in offices. Some of her colleagues did not even support her when they learned that she was quitting the job to pursue standup professionally. But she has always been a risk-taker and supports those who do the same. Talking about risks, she then tells how one of her brothers left a stable job and started a YouTube travel vlog during the Pandemic. Chan, Lizzy’s father, even roasted him for that, as he was getting more views on his ukulele videos than the travel vlog. Then she talked about his other brother, who had a crazy dream and started a trout farm in the backyard pool of his rental. This bizarre idea was far from successful, which she joked about in a terrific manner, and the crowd went berserk with laughter.
Lizzy then softens the audience a bit by sharing an incident about her father, who was diagnosed with colon cancer 10 years ago and has gone through a major operation. Just as she was entering the hospital room to visit him, one of his brothers said that their father looked like Gandhi. Before she could even process it, when she visited him in the hospital room, she burst out in laughter, and so did the audience with this joke. She also tells how everyone should have a near-death experience like her father, who is now really living his life with his newfound passion for playing the ukulele, which can be frustrating for others at times. Then she told how she and her father decided to go to Malaysia again, how her mother was sidelined by her father, who said “No Outsiders,” and also about the bizarre ritual of pouring beer on her grandparent’s grave. She ended the show with a uniquely funny yet sad note where she said that she wanted to see herself on a casket in a wedding gown with fake flowers and a mic in her hand and wanted her YouTuber brother to perform her eulogy from Bali.
Lizzy has an amazing style of storytelling, and the content of her jokes easily connects with the audience because of that. The other reason for this connection is the type of material she chose for the jokes, which is personal and close to her heart. Overall, it was a great episode with pangs of laughter and some heartwarming foolish stories.