‘Michelle Wolf: The Well’ Review – Sharp Writing Wasted On Overly Familiar Material

This is perhaps a controversial thing to say, but having children tends to ruin comedians. This is not a unique phenomenon, nor is it a gendered one (just ask Andrew Schulz). But it seems pretty unavoidable. Bringing a child into the world will always be the most important and significant thing a parent has ever done – from their perspective. It’s also the least important and significant thing from everyone else’s. That’s just how it works. Even Michelle Wolf, whose Netflix special The Well doesn’t so much revolve around the subject but continuously gets tugged back into its orbit, isn’t immune to the trap of believing that everyone else is as interested in your kids as you are.

To be fair, Wolf’s coming at it from slightly fresher angles. She’s an older mother, having given birth at 37 while already having a successful comedy career, one that mandates – or at least carries the expectation of – dead baby jokes. The special’s title, The Well, is part of one of those gags. So, that contradiction is explored, as is being a white mother to a mixed child, and the potential perils of airport children’s-book selections that might be misconstrued as racially insensitive.

But they’re still parenting jokes. Every new parent feels like their routine discoveries of how the process works are profoundly original insights, but every non-new parent has heard it all before. Every parent has distinct pre- and post-baby personas, unavoidably. Bringing a life into the world and being responsible for its safekeeping is such a momentous thing that it immediately becomes the only lens through which you can view your entire existence. It’s a universal experience, which is why I’m semi-convinced that a truly original point about the subject will never be made again, even by a comedian as sharp as Michelle Wolf.

This is why The Well was frustrating to me, since that sharp insight is very present elsewhere. Occasionally, Wolf veers into more trademark politically contentious topics and does a searing job. There’s some frustration with the idea of gay men, having been helped by women to secure their rights, not offering the same courtesy to women whose rights were stripped back by the overturning of Roe v. Wade. The payoff to this is a joke about Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story being tagged in the LGBTQ category by Netflix, only for the designation to be reversed following backlash. It’s a funny example underscored by a real point.

There’s similar poignancy in a reminder of how wildly ineffective the Democratic party is, and a smart part about how their hand-wavey “that won’t happen” denialism is exactly the kind of cavalier attitude that makes abortions necessary in the first place. That’s a real, relevant zinger, and could have been explored more deeply than it ends up being, since the subject inevitably reverts back to motherhood in due course.

Other targets slip into the crosshairs, including average people who fancy themselves professional dancers because they can pull off a TikTok trend, not having the self-awareness to realise that the reason those dances go viral is because they’re rubbish and require no actual ability, and even drag queens, with a point about the hypocrisy of claiming that Blake Lively’s colour-changing dress reveal at the Met Gala was stolen from drag culture, given that drag culture in its entirety is stolen from… well, you get the idea.

All of this stuff is classic Michelle Wolf, trademark Tickle-Me-Elmo voice and all. But The Well, ironically, keeps circling the same, more personal but less interesting subject, dulling the sharper material and bogging down the pacing. Wolf’s still great; still incisive and comfortable on stage. But for good chunks of this hour, she threatens to get lost in the sea comics that have riffed on the same stuff in a too-similar way.