Jim Gaffigan: Dark Pale

I laughed so much that my sides ached. He dared to go where many comedians shy away from these days. It was refreshing how he called the shots. True comedy pokes fun at real human experience. This is what I like about Jim; he gets real.

The dark comedy was a good way to not take myself so seriously. Life is short. You need to step back and laugh at some of the dogma and cultural things that make us real. I like how he addressed death, religion, and yes, coffee drinkers who are so wrapped up in themselves they forget to laugh.

If you are really honest with yourself you can laugh at multiple levels.

Even though Jim Gaffigan often jokes that he hates to work, I believe that memorizing thousands of jokes and their timing and delivery has to be hard, like working. On average, Gaffigan films one comedy special every other year, and also tours about 300 cities a year, based on what he has said in his specials. That is a lot of work too.

In between the comedy specials and the tour schedule, Gaffigan has to write about 75 minutes of new material. I would not mind seeing him do a show with the best bits from all of his old specials, like the Waffle House, Hot Pockets, IHOP stuff, and the bear stories. Gaffigan has put together lots of great sequences of jokes over the years.

Unfortunately, in Dark Pale, Gaffigan seems to be hitting a bit of burn-out. It has to be hard to be funny when you are tired of touring 300 cities a year for many many years, getting on endless series of airplanes, drinking at an endless series of airports while waiting to get on airplanes, staying at thousands of hotels, etc. I don't know Jim Gaffigan personally, but I know I would be tired of such a schedule, if that was my life and career.

I don't know if Jim Gaffigan can ever get back to when he thought of comedy as something fresh and funny in his mind. I hope he can. I love a lot of his old specials, like Quality Time, King Baby, Obsessed, Beyond the Pale, Mr. Universe, etc. I look forward to his next special, and hopefully it will be fresh and funny again.

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.

Jim Gaffigan has always been a reliable and hysterical laugh and this was just not it. He took a couple mediocre bits and absolutely rode them into oblivion. It really seemed like he either fell into the "they'll laugh at anything I say" trap, or he thought he could completely change his style. If I didn't know any better, I'd say he witnessed the meteoric rise of Joe Rogan and his band of edgy comics and decided to try and tiptoe that way too. We chuckled a few times and watched the whole show but it didn't have the same punch any of his other shows. I'm rooting for his next set to get back to funny Jim.

First of all it's essentially twenty-eight minutes of material that's been vamped and teased and fluffed somehow into an hour long special - which would be fine had it been funny or thought provoking or entertaining orrrr enjoyable! Then it's basically jokes about the jokes and bits on the joke just told which I mean.. Sure people love a call back and he does that third person commentary which can be endearing but this is not that - ok wait, I can explain it simply and it's not that he does diarrhea jokes - nay... It's cause he actually came at us with the laziest or played out of all jokes - Starbucks (and if u think it's not about the mispronounced name on the cup well boy-oh-boy....) all and all, for this once seamless storyteller that I fawned over, I have to say BOO! Boo Jim, just boo!