But while this special will be catnip for those who love the delirious absurdity of Ms. Bamford’s Netflix series, “Lady Dynamite,” it also represents a narrowing of her aesthetic, a doubling down on her quirks, occasionally at the expense of being consistently funny. It’s an intimate and inward-looking hour of stand-up that wrestles with the question of who is and who should be her audience.

In this special, Ms. Bamford, who emerged in the alternative comedy movement at the turn of the last century, pokes fun at herself for not wanting to perform in a sports bar; imitates an audience member upset at her paucity of punch lines; and sends up the common comedian boast that you need to play for a multitude of different crowds to really develop your skills. “I just did a pop-up open mike at a live birth,” she says. “You know, just to be there for baby’s first laugh.”

In her last special, a dynamite set that melded formal experimentation with tightly crafted jokes, Ms. Bamford performed to an audience of only her mother and father. The warm and supportive setting seemed to embrace a stereotype of alternative comics held by club comics (although the distinction between those two camps seems less and less meaningful), namely that they prefer to perform for crowds that are just like them, what Bill Burr derisively called a “comedy womb.”

Every fan base, including Mr. Burr’s, is its own bubble, and some comics push its limits more than others. “Old Baby” rests comfortably inside its womb, while pointedly drawing attention to it through its form, shifting settings every few minutes through deft edits (Jessica Yu directed the special with an assured and nimble touch), from Ms. Bamford telling jokes to her husband in their house, to a bunch of old friends on a suburban street, then to strangers in a bowling alley.

What’s striking is that her comedy doesn’t change while the context and audience does. A seasoned, virtuoso comedian, Ms. Bamford makes the case for stand-up as a personal art form that stays true to itself rather than adjusting to the crowd.