Stream It Or Skip It: 'Adrienne Iapalucci: The Dark Queen' on Netflix, where a Louis CK-approved comic speaks wit to our darkest impulses (2024)

Almost five years after she made her Netflix debut in Season 2 of The Degenerates with an 18-minute set, Adrienne Iapalucci returns to the streaming giant to stand alone with her 52-minute take on touchy subjects with her no-holds-barred matter-of-fact delivery. Coming just a week after the election, are you in the half of the nation that’s ready for it, or not?

ADRIENNE IAPALUCCI: THE DARK QUEEN: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Netflix goes all in on the buzzwords, describing Iapalucci’s stand-up as “unfiltered” as she “takes aim at our public figures, awkward tribute tattoos, virtue signaling, and more.”

Here are a few minutes not in the Netflix special from when Iapalucci opened for Louis CK at Madison Square Garden in January 2023 to give you a feel for her sensibilities.

What Comedy Specials Will It Remind You Of?: Iapalucci not only has toured with CK as his opening act, but also has him directing her for her properly improper Netflix “hour,” while another transgressive comic she tours with, Ari Shaffir, serves as an executive producer, and a photo of the trio posing in front of The Comedy Cellar closes out the end credits. So if you’re familiar with them, you may be in the mood for her, too.

Memorable Jokes: It’s not as if she doesn’t warn you. Not just with the titling of her special as The Dark Queen, but also by proclaiming up top: “I’m not a good person.”

So how dark are we talking? Well, after comparing the relative health of dog vaginas (rescues vs. non), she compares her liberal friend’s complaints about moving to Austin and finding herself surrounded by Texas conservatives to the complaints of Israelis surrounded by Arab nations who hate them. She says to both: “You are the problem.” Iapalucci notes that her grandmother is Jewish, and adds: “Listen, I’ve been to Israel. It’s not great. It’s just like hot — and beaches. It’s a lot like Florida.”

She also jokes that as someone who doesn’t closely follow the politics, that makes her a better person to joke about it, then comparing “Ukraine is like America’s stepchild, but Israel is our real child” and that would make Palestine America’s trans child. Why? “They exist, but we don’t want to talk about them.”

If you’re not squirming yet, then she brings the Middle East crisis home to roost with jokes suggesting we placate the Palestinians as America did for its indigenous Americans: “Has anyone tried giving them casinos?” She further drills the analogies down by reminding her audience at New York City’s Comedy Cellar that because Hamas has only terrorized Jews in Israel, it’s a matter of occupying space rather than religious ideology. Kind of like how she might hate her Puerto Rican neighbors in the Bronx! She even wonders if exchanging our Puerto Rican residents with Israel’s Jews might make Hamas rethink their hatred.

Iapalucci also takes aim at Hunter Biden, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Jeffrey Epstein and pedophiles, 9/11 “first responders,” Casey Anthony, school shootings, abortion, and the trans community.

Our Take: Of course, the whole idea is that while Iapalucci claims to not be good, that’s all for the sake of the jokes, the transgressiveness of saying the bad or darkest thing that presupposes you’re thinking that same thing but unwilling to give voice to it. And that she is, deep down, a good person. That’s why and how she can get away with treating us all as if we’re all the proverbial emperor with no clothes.

That comes through when she threads political needles such as trans rights, which has become an obsessive topic for stand-up comedians since Dave Chappelle and Ricky Gervais raked in millions of dollars and viewers for harping on it in their acts. For Iapalucci, while she feels society may chastise her even if she says something critical of a trans person who commits horrible crimes, she also puts forward an argument that if the federal government can afford to pay for every war, then the government should also pay for gender-affirming surgeries.

At multiple points, she suggests she might fall in line with Republican philosophy. But when she directly mentions the GOP, she merely says she likes them because “they’re honest about not caring about poor people.” And as someone who grew up poor, she feels more than qualified to talk about how she feels our leaders have neglected us.

In this way, she represents a voice more for the non-voters or the people who feel tuned out by both major political parties.

As CK wrote in an email Tuesday to his followers, referencing his January 2023 show at MSG: “Adrienne was astonishing on that show. I have heard far more people comment on how hilarious and unique and compelling she was than anything about myself. And for good reason.The crowd at The Gardenloved Adrienne, who has had little to no notoriety, who is a humble-to-a-fault selfantrope, who has a granite-real genuioyity and a sharp, guttural hysterically funny comedic voice.”

And of this special he directed, he adds this heaping praise for her comedy: “She creates aworld with no social gravity, with no moral arrow. Because she is disconnected from all sides, disinterested in approval for herself, she can be trusted by all. She provides what comedy has always provided and the world sorely needs especially in times of deep division. A place we can all meet and laugh about the things none of us can talk about. Where we say things no one should say, to hear them and to feel less afraidof these things and each other. I feel thatwhen comedians start picking sides, they rupture this delicate, absurd and healing sanctity.”

Our Call: STREAM IT. Perhaps now more than ever, but also always, it’s important to listen to people outside of your particular ideological bubbles to learn where they’re coming from, even if you might not agree with them, because then you may come closer to understand why we’re at where we’re at. And for that, Adrienne Iapalucci’s timing might just be perfect.

Sean L. McCarthy works the comedy beat. He also podcasts half-hour episodes with comedians revealing origin stories:The Comic’s Comic Presents Last Things First.