Beth Stelling Looks Homeward on New Special If You Didn’t Want Me Then

The homecoming comedy special is a move generally reserved for those stand-ups that have become household names or synonymous with their place of birth. The prodigal child oh-so-humbly returning to the place that made them as a kind of magnanimous gesture or to, as Colin Quinn did in his 1989 special Going Back To Brooklyn, try to reconnect with their comedy roots. 

It’s a trope that comedian Beth Stelling must have known well when she decided to film her latest hour If You Didn’t Want Me Then in her former hometown of Dayton, Ohio. The move was partially practical as much of the set revolves around her childhood, which she spent there and in Orlando, Florida. And even the material that spins out into her more recent days living and working in L.A. have threads that connect back to her formative years. 

This isn’t an unusual place for Beth Stelling to work. Even her justly celebrated 2020 special Girl Daddy devoted a good chunk of time to her younger days. But there’s something that makes her jokes about trying to awkwardly flirt with Tim, the teen boy who babysat her, and her 8th grade exploits of getting drunk at frat parties that hit a little harder knowing that she’s telling them to the actual people or at least folks who might know them IRL. Especially when a single laugh jumps out of the crowd after Stelling recounts Tim asking her out on a date recently—a bit that gave this special its title. She admits that it could have been Tim laughing and a quick subtitle pops up to confirm that it was. (Stick around through the credits for the cutscene where Stelling points out some other Dayton friends and family in the theater.)

In an era when so many celebrated comedy specials revolve around a single motif or a certain period in the comedian’s life, it feels almost old school to sit with an hour of jokes that seemed a little more scattershot or loosely connected. But take a step back and the overarching theme of If You Didn’t Want Me Then comes more into focus: how Stelling’s somewhat challenging childhood has informed her perspective as both a comic and a woman. 

Often in this special that takes the lighter form of extended pieces like the ridiculous story of her father’s years-long chore of feeding an ever-growing gaze of raccoons on the back porch of his Orlando home. A diet of dog food and Hershey’s Kisses because “they deserve dessert too.” It might otherwise come off as a too-good-to-be-true, Florida man type story if the special wasn’t punctuated with a montage of photos of said raccoons. But it also doesn’t feel like a leap to suggest that Stelling’s difficult upbringing may have fed into her decision to not have a child. 

That admission comes out in another great segment where Stelling goes over her history with birth control. With a little audience participation, she lays out the awful side effects of the pills she takes to reduce her chances of getting pregnant. (“Multiple personalities!” a lone voice yells out when she asks what any fellow users of one pill dealt with. “I’m glad you both could make it tonight,” Stelling fires back.) It’s a terrifying list that ranges from spotting to dark patches on the skin to mood swings. She gets the laughs but makes them sting with the underlying reality of the hell that women go through just to be in control of their bodies. The same applies to her recounting the cross country drive she took from L.A. to Dayton before filming the special. Deciding to go camping one night, a twig snap outside her tent caused her to pretend to be two people: a withering woman and her brutish husband.  

The ability to absorb life’s pain through laughter has long been Stelling’s comedic superpower. Before filming Girl Daddy, her sets apparently included material about the abuse she suffered at the hands of a former partner. It was, she has said, the only way she knows how to process the difficult things in her life. Stelling opted not to go quite that dark in Girl Daddy and only toes the line here with a bit about doing a set at Planned Parenthood benefit. Maybe she held back a little knowing that old friends and family would be on hand, but who could fault her for that? She falls into the net of comfort that being in her hometown offers and bounces back with hilarious memories of bad decisions, water bras, and all the wonders and horrors of an awkward adolescence that led to an equally awkward adulthood.

Beth Stelling’s new special If You Didn’t Want Me Then is now streaming on Netflix.