In terms of the quality of the material delivered in Son I Never Had, this special is really just okay at best. Heather McMahan has charisma and personality, but she has a tendency to run directly into the set-ups for her jokes, without the kind of build-up between segments that would make the whole hour flow better. And the comedy here is pretty standard, lightly raunchy fare that's often amusing but never really cuts deep into the various topics McMahan brings up. Where she's really successful, instead, is in the way she uses humor to contrast the lingering but gentle grief she feels over her father's passing. Son I Never Had, in its own roundabout way, becomes a sort of extended eulogy, emphasizing how our loved ones remain with us in our every memory.

McMahan is excellent at shifting her tone in a way that doesn't ever kill the vibe or make the audience feel bad for laughing. She's very level-headed when she has to talk about serious things, speaking in a warm, almost motherly manner that helps establish how things like death and comedy are totally allowed to coexist. More than that, they're often two sides to the same experience. So while this special is more interested in the actual movement from light to dark than in making funny observations or astute statements about grief, McMahan proves that she has the potential to write something even more emotionally complex.