Jim Gaffigan: Dark Pale

As a big Gaffigan fan, this latest special is is weakest one to date. And he's had some weak ones already. After the Pale Tourist (which was fantastic) he kinda ran out of ideas. Most of the hour was a DOA. His jokes just don't land and are undercooked and totally unfunny. I did appreciate the darker material, especially about the pandemic. He's pretty funny when he is sounding more negative about life. But unfortunately, the rest of the jokes are just bland. This will be the last special I watch from him. Hopefully he'll just have some good film roles in the future. He is good in the parts he's had in movies.

Just as good as the last ones, but COVID had taken his comedy into darker directions and I am all here for it! You can't expect someone to just make food jokes (and there still are some) for a quarter of a century. Also I bet some of this got review bombed because he said he hates Trump! He hates Trump not you get over yourself conservatives.

I thought his material was stronger pre-pandemic, but he is still better than 99% of active comedians and he doesn't weigh into the culture wars like Chapelle or Gervis even though I agree they have every right to. Just his typical brand of humor with a dark comedy twist.

When I first tried to watch Dark Pale from the beginning, I gave up after 5 minutes. I was surprised because I'm a fan of Gaffigan's humor & specials.

Then I saw a clip from Dark Pale from later in the show about dads and that was funny.

So, what I did was I skipped the "dark" humor from the beginning and got to about 15 minutes where Jim's more typical jokes started. Then it was regular Gaffigan humor the rest of the way. Some funny stuff from then on.

What's the problem? Imo after so many specials, Jim and Jeannie are running out of material and decided to try something new at the beginning of the show. Just skip that and the old Jim is back.

7/10.

On a positive note: this is the only comedy show I've seen in a while that I didn't have to shut down due to numerous F-bombs (and worse). Keeping the act clean: good for you Jim.

On the other hand, I rate a comedy show by the number of times I actually laugh during the show... and a good show brings me to tears from laughing so hard. To be honest, I'm not really sure if I actually laughed out loud during the entire show. Maybe a light chuckle here or there. That's about it.

The shame is that there was some material that would have been legitimately funny-- if another comic had done it who had better timing. I could tell when a joke thudded just because his timing was lousy. A little longer pause and he'd have nailed it. But nah, it was like he just rambled on and well, that one went over like lead balloon. (Which has some actual relevance to his show.)

I did somewhat enjoy the Starbucks section, not because it was funny but because it was pretty spot on. His monologue on death and funerals was somewhat humorous but not especially impressive. A lengthy run-on dialog about diarrhea (un-funny at that) does not a comedy show make.

This was pretty sad. I think I'm generous in giving it 4 stars, but then again, he kept the show language relatively clean.

Next time Jim, maybe have an honest test audience listen to your show before you get in front of an audience. "Jim, it really wasn't that funny" would be doing you a big favor.

I love the comedy of Gaffigan. But in this special, there are sections where he traded in social commentary for comedy. Don't get me wrong, I can laugh at jokes directed at any party. But his SJW 'jokes' didn't even make me chuckle. I've seen all of his specials, but I've noticed that the more political he gets, the less funny his specials become.

In all honesty, I don't think I laughed until about 15 minutes into it, and he's done diarrhea jokes in the past, but this one went WAY to long. I will admit that there were parts in there that was funny in the way that Gaffigan normally does it. Overall, I'd say this wasn't one of his best efforts. But he's set the bar pretty high for himself and it's hard to keep that consistency.