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Almost five years after its 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 exploration of sensitive topics and her uncompromising, no-nonsense performance. Just a week after the election, are you part of the half of the nation that is ready for this or not?

The essentials: Netflix is ​​going all in on the catchphrases, describing Iapalucci’s stand-up as “unfiltered” as she “takes aim at our public figures, embarrassing tribute tattoos, virtue signaling and more.”

Here are a few minutes, not included in the Netflix special, from Iapalucci’s performance for Louis CK at Madison Square Garden in January 2023 to give you a sense of her sensibilities.

What comedy specials will it remind you of?: In addition to touring with CK as the opening act, Iapalucci used him to direct her wildly inappropriate Netflix “Hour,” while another transgressive comedian she’s touring with, Ari Shaffir, serves as executive producer, and a photo of the trio posing in front of The Comedy Cellar rounds out the end credits. So if you know her, you might like her too.

Memorable Jokes: It’s not that she doesn’t warn you. Not just with the title of their special as The Dark Queenbut also by proclaiming at the top: “I am not a good person.”

So how dark are we talking? Now, after comparing the relative health of dogs’ vaginas (rescue vs. not), she compares her liberal friend’s complaints about moving to Austin and being surrounded by Texas conservatives to the complaints of Israelis, who are surrounded by Arab nations that hate them. She tells them both, “You are the problem.” Iapalucci notes that her grandmother is Jewish and adds, “Listen, I was in Israel. It’s not great. It’s just hot – and beaches. It’s a lot like Florida.”

She also jokes that as someone who doesn’t follow politics closely, she’s a better person to joke about than compare, “Ukraine is like America’s stepchild, but Israel is our real child” and that would be Palestine make America’s trans child. Why? “It exists, but we don’t want to talk about it.”

If you’re not already squirming, she gets to the heart of the Middle East crisis with jokes suggesting we appease the Palestinians the way America did its indigenous Americans: “Did anyone try to give them casinos To give?” She deepens the analogies further by reminding her audience at New York’s Comedy Cellar that because Hamas has only terrorized Jews in Israel, it’s more about occupying spaces than religious ideology goes. A bit like she might hate her Puerto Rican neighbors in the Bronx! She even wonders whether exchanging our Puerto Rican residents with Israeli Jews might make Hamas reconsider its 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 opinion: The whole idea, of course, is that although Iapalucci claims to be not good, it is all for the sake of humor, transgression, saying the bad or darkest thing, which assumes that one thinks the same but is not prepared to to express it. And that deep down she is a good person. That’s why and how she manages to treat us all like we’re all the proverbial emperor without clothes.

This comes through when she tackles political issues like transgender rights, which have become an obsessive topic for stand-up comedians since Dave Chappelle and Ricky Gervais raked in millions of dollars and viewers for harping on them in their performances. Although Iapalucci feels that society might chastise her even if she says something critical about a trans person committing terrible crimes, she also makes the argument that if the federal government is paying, the government should pay too can pay for gender-affirming surgeries for every war.

In several places she hints that she might subscribe to the republican philosophy. But when she mentions Republicans directly, she simply says she likes them because “they’re honest and don’t care about poor people.” And as someone who grew up poor, she feels more than qualified to do so to talk about how she feels our leaders have neglected us.

In this way, she represents the voice of non-voters or people who feel excluded from the two major political parties.

As CK wrote in an email to his followers on Tuesday, referencing his January 2023 show at MSG: “Adrienne was amazing on this show. I heard far more people comment on how hilarious, unique and compelling she was than anything else about me. And for good reason. Audiences at The Garden loved Adrienne, who has achieved little to no fame, is a self-promoter who is modest to the smallest detail, has a rock-hard authenticity and a sharp, throaty, hysterically funny comedic voice.”

And to this special he directed, he adds this effusive praise for her comedy: “She creates a world without social seriousness, without a moral arrow. Because she is disconnected from all sides and has no interest in recognition for herself, everyone can trust her. It offers what comedy has always offered and what the world desperately needs, especially in times of deep division. A place where we can all meet and laugh about the things none of us can talk about. Where we say things no one should say in order to hear them and be less afraid of those things and of each other. I feel like comedians destroy that delicate, absurd, healing sacredness when they start choosing sides.”

Our call: STREAM IT. Perhaps now more than ever, but always, it is important to listen to people outside your particular ideological bubbles to find out where they are coming from, even if you may not agree with them, because then you may better understand why we are who we are where we are. And Adrienne Iapalucci’s timing might just be perfect for that.

Sean L. McCarthy provides the comedy beat. He also provides half-hour episodes on the podcast in which comedians reveal stories about the making of the film: The comic of the comic presents the last things first.

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