Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Lizzy Hoo: Hoo Cares!?’ On Prime Video, An Aussie Who Quit Her Day Job During The Pandemic For Comedy

On her own website, Lizzy Hoo tells us she only started performing stand-up comedy in 2017, and in the opening minutes of her debut special on Prime Video, she says that she only just now quit her day job to pursue comedy full-time. Even amateur critics would have a field day with that revelation, as well as with the title of her Amazon hour. But what should we say about it after giving it a proper viewing?

LIZZY HOO: HOO CARES!?: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Lizzy Hoo found comedy success early, reaching the finals of a nationwide comedy contest in Australia only a year into her career, and began following that up the next year with her first of several TV credits.

For this, her first full-length stand-up special, Hoo introduces us to her through stories about her upbringing, what her brothers have been up to in their adult lives, and why quitting her day job and leaving office life behind for comedy in her late 30s might not seem so crazy once you hear about the trip she took in her early 20s.

What Comedy Specials Will It Remind You Of?: From a distance, Hoo presents herself more than a little bit like Ali Wong, with her big glasses and her hair pulled back. But then Hoo opens her mouth to reveal her decidedly Down Under accent.

Memorable Jokes: Hoo’s parents are getting old enough for her to worry when they call more than once in a day, but she can make light of her mom presenting a bag of a dead guy’s shoes as a gift, or by describing what her mom looked like back when she turned 60 and decided to celebrate by skydiving (“cheeks like an umbrella in a cyclone”).

She juxtaposes the weirdness of learning about herself in a new light by taking acting classes, even though she doesn’t want to act. She just wants to earn enough money in comedy so she never has to return to office work, where she had to endure personality color tests. “I was labeled yellow, which I thought was quite racist,” she recalled, despite being told that yellow meant she was a team player at work.

But whenever she thinks about having quit her day job, she thinks of what her two brothers have decided to do with their lives. One brother started a YouTube travel channel, leaving his job in Singapore to move to Bali and vlog “during a pandemic,” prompting much ribbing from the rest of the family. Even from their father, who somehow manages to score more YouTube views for his own ukulele videos. Then there’s Hoo’s other older brother, who started a trout farm in his backyard aboveground pool, confidently expecting to make money off of the pandemic’s food insecurity.

Spoiler alert? Lizzy quips: “I’m the only person who’s going to make money off the trout farm.”

Our Take: The pandemic prompted many of us around the world to question what we’d been doing and why, so why not make the most of however much is left to quit your day job and become a comedian, right?

For Hoo, it’s perhaps easier for her to reach that decision. Not just because she’s funny and likable onstage, and not just because her brothers seem more foolish by comparison, but also because, as she reveals late in the hour, she has seen how her dad has a “new lease on life” in his 80s after surviving colon cancer.

As she wonders aloud, do we all need to see our own mortality, or a “little amuse Bouche of rock bottom,” to truly live?

Throughout the hour, she returns occasionally to the story about a road trip she took at 22 with two friends from Canada to Mexico after buying a used van for $500. Even though that seemed an unreasonably low price for a reliable mode of transportation. Even though she didn’t even have a flip phone on her in 2006 to call for help. And even though her own mom had met her dad because of a hitchhiking trip through Southeast Asia in the 1970s. Lizzy Hoo didn’t seem scared back then, though she’d never attempt a trip like that now. So why should anything hold her back now?

Our Call: The title invites the critical reflexive question: Who cares, indeed? But this hour is a snapshot of a comedian finding herself onstage and in the world. I get the sense that better things are yet to come. Which means you could SKIP IT, but you may just want to STREAM IT and get in on the ground floor before everyone knows who Hoo is.

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.