Adrienne Iapalucci: The Dark Queen

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.

Nothing groundbreaking or hilarious here. A few laughs for sure, but her low energy really makes it drag after a short time, and it's not SUCH low energy that is a schtick of hers or anything where you think "oh, part of the humor here is her monotone delivery".

She just kind of gives off that "I'm too cool to care" vibe that a lot of jaded bar/small club veteran comedians get when they haven't made a career leap and kind of realize they won't ever.

They think it's because they're "too edgy" and "refuse to sell out to the man" and they "don't have THE look" and that's why they haven't become famous, but ugly, raunchy and provocative comedians are doing quite well these days. You still have to put in the effort to be successful and put on a show- it is still supposed to be entertaining.

I am surprised Louie CK Directed this and put his promotional weight behind it.

I'm NOT surprised that he has her open for him, she's a funny person for sure, and definitely a decent comic- just not someone that should have a special.

She really needs to realize that the jaded, "I'm not going to dance for you" attitude comes across in her show and that style of comedy really only works in small doses and small comedy clubs.

Overall, it's worth a peek- some people might love it. She's obviously a seasoned comedian and is funny but I just can't get over the stuff that's holding her back, and if she can't either then she's never going to pop.

Like others here, I watched this after a recommendation from Louis CK. I think Louis has skin in the game, because this is no better than average. Some mildly funny material, but the shock quotient wears off after a few minutes and you are left looking at your watch for the rest of it. It's like she looked at Louis, decided to try to be as outrageous as him, but neglected to come up with the material to match the outrage. Strange to hear the audience laughing so heartily throughout - I guess the drinks were cheap. Maybe she should see if Louis would write her some jokes. The girl seems nervous all the way through as well, which is quite distracting.

So I saw Adrienne on the Secret Podcast and thought that she's pretty chill and I decided to check out the special too.

I gotta be honest, I'm usually quite skeptical regarding women comedy, I try to go in without expectations, but my experience is that I'm rarely being pleasantly surprised.

I think it has something to do with comedy being dark in this case, which made it better.

And the overall chill tone.

Somehow, I do like the borderline melancholic comedy, there's beauty to it.

It's better when its dark, cause it usually extrapolates on what people really think in the back of their minds (until they apply their social, political and other filters to their thought).

I did find this stand up to be consistently funny. A bit short, but it has plenty of good jokes.

Honestly, the weakest point was probably just the last one, that Bundy joke was pretty thin threaded.

Other than that, a good, well-rounded performance, really looking forward for more.

I will watch the next one too, so requesting more!

Thanks!

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.