IN his newest Netflix special, comedian Joseph Glenn Herbert, better known as “Jo Koy,” continues to marvel at his Filipino roots while touring his Filipino-American friends around a city he used to live in.

Jo Koy: In His Elements is Filipino as Mr. Herbert empathically says onstage: “every element of this show is Filipino.” And it was true, but only to a point because what makes Mr. Herbert’s comedy so relatable is the amusement sparked by a person wondering why his Filipino mother does the things she does — things we never dared to ask our mothers.

He tells a story of his mother’s propensity to have him dance whenever anyone visited their house once she discovered that he could dance a mean Michael Jackson.

The bit is met with uproarious laughter because many of us, at one point, wondered why our parents had us put on a talent show for visitors.

This is Mr. Herbert’s third special with Netflix after Live in Seattle in 2017 and Comin’ In Hot in 2019.

While much of the special features Mr. Herbert doing a stand-up comedy show in Solaire Resort and Casino in Parañaque City, each segment is interspersed with a short travelogue where he “tours” fellow Filipino-Americans like breakdancer Ronnie Abaldonado and Grammy-winning music producer Ramon “!llmind” Ibanga, Jr., around Manila.

I say “tours” because the visits to places like churches are so short that they are meant to point out that none of the people Mr. Herbert brought over for the special had ever been to the Philippines.

Mr. Herbert himself only spent five years in the Philippines, though in interviews he said that those five years were his happiest.

There are scenes of them traveling from the airport to hotel via a fully decked-out, colorful jeepney (which, sadly, are even scarcer now with the lockdown), playing street basketball, and eating chicken adobo.

And then we go back to the stage show where he says that Filipinos are so close that he only just realized that one of the cameramen, the one assigned to take his close-ups, was his uncle. Whether it was true or not, it made for a great laugh.

Another segment is about how he got his name “Jo Koy.” The build-up is long — longer than his other stories — and the pay-off isn’t that surprising (especially if you are a writer who has asked him about it before), but the delivery is gold and the audience is in stitches.

At length, Jo Koy: In His Elements is a enjoyable romp about a man discovering his Filpino-ness and having fun while doing it.

The comedy special streams starting June 12 on Netflix. — Zsarlene B. Chua

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