“How much do you weigh?”
This question, asked of comedian Jared Freid by his father while on vacation in Delray Beach, Florida, became the inspiration for his new hour of stand-up covering family, body issues, adulthood and the strange closeness between millennials and their boomer parents.
He also justifies why, at 41 years old, he chooses to remain on the family cellphone plan.
Aptly titled “Family Plan,” Freid’s second special will drop on Netflix Sept. 1. The comic is known for giving dating advice on his long-running podcasts, “The JTrain Podcast” and “U Up?” and most recently in his new book, “Walking Red Flag.”
Freid sat down with Fox News Digital to talk about his new special and unpack his parental relationships, from some of his “most horrific memories” involving his mother arguing with other moms over beach chairs to the grave realization that he has the exact same body as his father.
For all his jesting complaints about his loud, Jewish family, Freid described them as “the main driver” of his material. Frustration is where a lot of his jokes originate, he said, and few people frustrate him with as much precision as his own kin.
“We [millennials] have a weird relationship, that’s okay to acknowledge, with our parents,” Freid said.
“Millennials are incredibly insecure and notice everything. Boomers are incredibly confident and unaware. And what a horrible combination,” the comedian said.
“Millennials might be living in hell on earth, considering that combination. Our parents are the most confident and unaware generation, and we have to deal with them every day and we love them,” he continued.
“So that takes an incredible amount of restraint and empathy from our end, because the enraging part about parents is they’re always 10% right.”
Freid, who clarified that he uses the word “boomer” with love, made the case that millennials have a uniquely intertwined relationship with their parents, in part because many millennials are worse off financially than the generation before them, which comes with certain entanglements (like staying on the family phone plan or attending a family vacation paid for by mom and dad).
He said “Family Plan” is exactly the type of comedy he wants to do: an hour of material, unified by the through-line of the Freid family beach trip, that people can watch with their own families, be it their parents or “that cousin that they go and smoke weed with during Thanksgiving.”
That approach has already shaped his next hour. Freid said his current material grew from another parental indignity: his father offering him Ozempic at dinner.
“Should I be embarrassed to leave the house? Do I look that horrific that you have to offer me your prescription medication?” Freid wondered.
Rather than repeat the jokes from “Family Plan” â Freid made it clear that his parents provide no shortage of material â he will try to repeat its form, starting with a moment of anger and letting it expand into something larger.
The specifics of the set are his, but the emotional dynamic is widely recognizable, and fans have told him so.
“People would come up to me and go, ‘That’s my parents! You’re talking about my dad, that’s my mom. My parents ask me about my weight and are obsessed with my body and I’m on the family plan.'”
Beyond merely cracking jokes at boomers’ expense, Freid aims to create a humorous mirror that allows audiences to recogn
