Adrienne Iapalucci: The Dark Queen

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.

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.

Some things are just not funny-there's a line between controversial comedy that has us rolling on the floor laughing and the kind that deserves condemnation, and no comedian should cross that line. Comedians like Adrienne Lapalucci believe there are no limits as to what or whom they can joke about. She's the type that thinks if society values freedom of speech, then no topic should be taboo. But these comedians often use jokes that hurt and have a lasting and damaging impact on others.

Besides, she stole most of her material from other comedians like Louis CK, who talked about paedophilia in his opening monologue on Saturday Night Live, and right after that, he received backlash for it on Twitter.

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.