When Jared Freid first told his parents he was pursuing stand-up comedy, “it felt like coming out of the closet.” He hadn’t been a particularly funny kid — it was instilled in him to be polite, say please and thank you, and speak when spoken to. If anything, his childhood taught him to be a good listener. It makes sense, then, why Freid is your girlfriend’s favorite comic.

“A lot of women get brought to comedy shows by their boyfriends, who are trying to be the arbiter of what’s funny,” says Freid. “They’re seeing a comic they don’t relate to, and they’re finding out that their boyfriend relates to this piece of shit. Holy fuck, what a bad night for them.”

Courting a fanbase composed primarily of French-manicured Love Is Blind obsessives was never a calculated move by Freid, but thanks to the powers of “Jewish geography 101,” he crossed paths with the founders of Betches when all four of them were just beginning to shape their comedy careers. In 2017, they pitched him on a dating podcast with Betches’ Jordana Abraham called U Up?, designed to offer both the male and female perspectives on sex and relationships. Their chemistry and unsugarcoated advice led to instant success with millennial daters, and Freid later went on to cover The Bachelor franchise for the company, cementing a strategic niche for himself.

“I’ve always felt like a brother to the Betches,” Freid says with a smile, and he’s immensely proud of the audience he’s built. “Clubs always say to me, ‘We love your audience.’ Because it’s fun, upward-mobile women who are there to have a great time. This is their Saturday night, and I better make it worth it.”

With his brand-new special, The Family Plan, now streaming on Netflix, Freid departs from the first date travesties and single guy woes that have influenced much of his mainstream material. “I think people get caught up in brands because of the algorithm, or they think, ‘This is what made me funny, so I have to stick with it.’ But the goal for me has always been that my [other endeavors] would bring people to my standup,” explains Freid, who isn’t worried that the new jokes won’t resonate with his loyal fans.

The hour focuses on Freid’s relationship with his parents, two headstrong Boomers with little regard for their volume level. He leverages an encounter at the beach with his father, who looks him up and down in his beach chair, and bluntly inquires, “How much do you weigh?” as a framing device, with countless hilarious bits in between (including an impassioned takedown of the Emperor of Atkins, Rob Lowe). It’s a smart play, because if picturing yourself in that scenario doesn’t immediately spur a visceral reaction, you’re either Kendall Jenner or a cyborg.

The special doesn’t pull punches (like revealing that his dad’s TikTok algorithm is full of women with fat asses), despite being centered on Freid’s nearest and dearest. When he started testing the material at the Comedy Cellar, the staff was anxious to know if his parents had heard the jokes yet. “I was like, ‘What do you mean? They lived it!’ None of these stories are false. It’s just my side of the story, and they have their side,” Freid offers.

That said, when Freid’s mother watched his show for the first time, she objected to “his side of the story,” and rose to her feet, shouting, “Nooo! Nooo!” in an attempt to refute the narrative in front of the live audience. “Now I’m getting heckled by my mom at the Comedy Cellar,” Freid recalls with a laugh.

While Freid’s first Netflix special, 37 And Single, was painfully relatable to anyone who’s sick of their married friends pretending to be mystified by the interface of Hinge, The Family Plan is designed for anyone who has ever been forced into a random group photo by an overzealous mom with an iPhone Pro Max. When Freid performs, he can see adult children punching their dads in the arm, “being like, ‘He’s talking about you, you fucking asshole.’” For Freid, these family interactions after shows are “the most fulfilling thing in the world.”

It’s a cheerful antidote to the rage-bait style of comedy that’s become more present in the social media era. “Right now, whoever takes over the conversation is whoever says the worst shit. A lot of comics call it Claptor comedy, where they’re just going for claps.”

I ask Freid how he plans to spend the day that the special premieres, admitting that if it were me in his shoes, I’d probably spend 48 hours locked in my room searching my name on Twitter and reading every good, bad, and soul-shattering comment.

“I do want to read everything, but my fear is no one will say anything! What if I go looking and there’s nothing there? That’s my fear, that no one will care at all. But I hope it turns into the biggest special ever. I think it deserves that.”

To keep his worries at bay, Freid will go to a nice dinner with his girlfriend that evening, and then take a lake vacation with his family where he can stay off his phone. And if the special does blow up, he can rely on his mom to keep him humble. “My mom can’t [fathom] that people recognize me. The other night at dinner in Boca, three women came up to me, and she was looking at them like they must know me from high school.”

After touring his show for two and a half years on the road, The Family Plan reaching your living room represents the end of an era for Freid. “There’s a finality to having a special on Netflix. These jokes are done. The story is over. . .It’s the best work I’ve ever done, and I’m ready for people to see it. I’m ready to do standup this way forever.”

Jared Freid: The Family Plan is currently streaming on Netflix.