Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Marcella Arguello: Bitch, Grow Up!’ On HBO Max, Standing Tall In Her Solo Comedy Debut

Marcella Arguello has performed stand-up on HBO before (on the series 2 Dope Queens), as well making appearances on Netflix and Starz, but after a long time coming, she finally gets her own solo stand-up special on HBO Max. Was it worth the wait?

MARCELLA ARGUELLO: BITCH, GROW UP! STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: You may have seen Arguello on TV or streaming before, but not like this. A proud Latina, her solo debut premieres on both the channel HBO Latino and platform HBO Max.

In this half-hour, she jokes about having to find her short king since she’s 6-foot-2, how that dating process has felt even more complicated since the pandemic, her takes on race, gender and identity, and a look back at her drug-free childhood.

What Comedy Specials Will It Remind You Of?: Her confidence and outlook might remind you of someone else who has broken through thanks to HBO Max and HBO Latino, so it’s perhaps no surprise that Aida Rodriguez also directed Arguello here.

Memorable Jokes: Arguello embraces both her height and her heritage, and is more than willing to mock herself and her own looks first. Not that she also won’t get around to mocking others when they deserve it, such as the woman at the bank she was working at who thought she could smack-talk her in Spanish, not realizing Arguello is Latina. As she slyly tags this bit: “The difference between white and white passing is that I would never put my parents in a nursing home.”

She also uses the pandemic to make fun of her friends, whether it’s realizing how out of touch they are financially, or sexually. On the latter subject, Arguello revels in revealing her desires — a reference to Michael Jackson prompts a spirited and prolonged act-out — as well as her own figurative shortcomings, wherein she realizes that the problem in her relationships might be her.

It all comes back to her, with a final set-piece in which Arguello not only re-reads the D.A.R.E. essay she wrote as a 10-year-old and previously only read for her classmates, but also a new letter that the comedian has written in response to her younger self.

Our Take: As striking as her debut half-hour is, it’s perhaps even more effective after seeing an opening montage of Arguello in her younger salad days, being brought up to the stages of much smaller comedy clubs or venues such as laundromats that don’t even have stages. All of which is to say, she wants us to know she has earned this moment.

Which makes watching her react to this adoring audience at her HBO taping that much sweeter. She stops to both appreciate and admonish the studio audience for interrupting her with their applause, at one point claiming: “This is too much!” Or is it? 

Our Call: STREAM IT. Arguello says her ADHD means the audience distracts her from her craft, but actually, she’s so in tune with them that it makes for a funnier show and a better special. It also serves as a great advertisement for seeing her live.

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.