Adrienne Iapalucci: The Dark Queen

I don't know how this show isn't rated higher, I was laughing out loud so many times along with my husband that we almost forgot we were watching a woman. I even got teary at the end just by being so happy a woman finally made me laugh for more than one joke. I say almost forgot because we could have done without the lady part jokes or at least the P word, which for some reason female comedians seem to think is good revenge for all the dick jokes male comedians supposedly make, but how about we just do without either???

I don't know. Either way the rest of it was pretty amazing and worthy of paying what I'd pay to see a male comedian. As a woman my standards are higher since obviously we just hate other women already so they have to work harder than the guys to get a laugh out of us. You can tell with Adrienne's pacing, delivery, timing and topics that she puts a lot of hard work into the craft and doesn't just rely on her looks or pandering to women. Her jokes were definitely dark and it's certainly not clean comedy, but that's clearly what the world needs right now. I can't wait to see what else she has to say.

I've never heard about Adrienne Iapalucci before, but since I got a newsletter from Louis CK recommending her as one of his favorite comedians, I decided to check her special out ASAP.

The title is absolutely fitting, she does have an extremely crude, dark sense of humor as she discusses current events and controversial topics such as the war in Ukraine, Israel vs Palestine, 9/11, pedophilia, school shootings with brutal honesty, sparing no sides of the political spectrum and mocking all the hipocrisy plaguing our society.

Her unique, jaded, deadpan style delivery accentuates the already pretty dark material, and some of her observations are indeed quite smart and made me laugh, but many jokes felt unnecessarily dark for me. The small audience in front of which this was recorded kept groaning as well.

So while she's definitely talented, my problem is that I'm well aware of all these issues she's talking about and these days I feel like I don't really want to be reminded of them constantly in an exceedingly graphic way. If anything, I want to escape for a brief moment from the depressing state of affairs when I look for entertainment.

When I was younger and things were simpler, this kind of edgy, dark humor used to be really appealing to me, but lately it just feels uncomfortable and cringy. It's probably because with all the nonsense that happened in the world in the past few years I want to cling to the idea that there's hope, and this jaded world view is just not my thing.

Could be a me issue, your mileage may vary.

Same old anti-transgender, racist garbage that every dime a dozen right wing comic is doing right now.

Anyone claiming she hits both sides isn't paying attention. She attacks liberals over and over without mentioning conservatives.

She makes fun of Porte Ricians not because she has a punchline to get to but because she literally hates them and think a they are lazy jobless immigrants.

Over and over, there is no build up to anything insightful. Crass and hatefill is not dark comedy.

This sort of ignorant comedians who only punch down appears to be Netflix target demographic. Offense for the sake of offensive is comedy gold for the hateful and ignorant.

All right, so I guess I was expecting a lot due to her connection with Louis C. K. and perhaps set myself up for disappointment.

I love dark humor and I don't believe there's a limit on what you can joke about....as long as the jokes are good. And some of hers were. I definitely literally laughed out loud multiple times. And then there were times where it felt like the material was written by a teenage edge-lord on 4chan in 2009. It's not that it was offensive, it's that some of the material was a tired and predictable.

It felt like it wasn't coming naturally through her at some points, too. I don't know how else to explain it other than it felt like she was trying to be edgy for the sake of being edgy rather than being her authentic self.

I do think she shows a good deal of promise and hope she continues to develop her voice. She seems rather intelligent so I'm hoping she elevates her comedy a bit to match that and then I think there'll be something really good there.

Not overly funny and often offensive on purpose. One of those comics that intentionally make racist, homophobic, or rape, etc. "jokes" that they think are edgy and provocative. The jokes she feels don't land where the thinks they should have are indicated be her saying... "No" after that joke. She says that a lot, in fact. Not bad comedy; but not great either. Comedy is subjective, so your mileage may vary. For me: this was mostly flat, and derivative (I can see it all coming a mile away). Ho hum attitude without any energy. Works for some, but maybe not for her. I just did not really care for her delivery, and material. Nothing she said was, in reality, offensive to me... it was just that she was trying to be offensive with -dead pan- delivery and not sticking any landings with me. In a nutshell, that is my take on this special and was sub-par for me.