Dark Pale
Prime Video · 2023 · 64 min
The clean-cut family man takes a slightly darker turn in Tampa.
For someone who built a career on mild-mannered jokes about Hot Pockets and pale skin, there is something deeply satisfying about watching Jim Gaffigan drop an audience into the deep end with a joke about a plane nose-diving for three minutes. He spends much of this hour leaning into a pitch-black perspective, testing his famously clean reputation against grim realities. He keeps the high-pitched falsetto commentary, but here, his inner critic is practically begging him to return to safe food jokes.
Filmed in February 2023 at the Straz Center in Tampa, Florida, the hour was released on Prime Video that July as his tenth stand-up special. At this stage in his career, Gaffigan was preparing for an arena tour with Jerry Seinfeld and expanding his film acting portfolio, but on stage, he is working through a more fatalistic outlook on a post-pandemic world. Notable routines include his pitch for morbid reality shows like “Dead or Cake?” and “Pimp My Corpse,” a disastrous family hot air balloon ride in Mexico, and a blunt assessment of his five teenage children. Critics largely praised the shift toward more cynical ground, even if some long-time fans found the opening pandemic material and bodily humor a bit of a departure.
The set list
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Wearing a mask and the monkeypox scare
Misdirects the audience about wearing a mask in Tampa and compares monkeypox to a children's cereal with unexpected prizes.
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Societal reaction to COVID and plane crash behavior
Jokes about society numbing itself to death and re-enacts the weird passenger and crew reactions during a three-minute plane nose-dive.
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Mischievous funeral plans and funeral etiquette
Suggests turning his funeral into a surprise party in pajamas and analyzes what Catholics actually say while kneeling by the casket.
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Dead men wearing suits and a reality TV pitch
Pitches a reality TV concept called 'Dead or Cake', keeping up his reputation for food jokes.
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Montezuma's Revenge and Starbucks
Compares Montezuma's diarrhea power to the Avengers, Oprah, and Liam Neeson's skills in 'Taken'.
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God delivering the Old Testament plagues
Imagines God reviewing the plagues with an assistant like album releases and criticizing modern humans for missing the signs of climate change and pandemics.
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Inheriting dead friends' phone numbers
Considers how strangers inherit deceased relatives' phone numbers and end up in family group chats.
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Hot air balloon rides with daughters
Questions the sanity of riding in a hot air balloon basket.
How it plays
- Tone
- Darker, humorous, reflective, slightly cynical yet underscored with silliness.
- On stage
- Darker, incisive, self-deprecating yet maintaining his affability and trademark inner voice.
- About
- death and mortality, post-COVID emotional landscape, funerals and burial traditions, diarrhea and illness, religion and biblical plagues, family and dad life
What the critics said
Critical reception noted it as an adventurous and darker evolution of Gaffigan's comedy, praised as potentially his best work since 'Mr. Universe' by Decider, while audience reviews on Rotten Tomatoes were mixed to polarized.
Backstory
Reflects the post-COVID emotional landscape, societal numbing three years into the pandemic, global warming, and thoughts on mortality.
Details
- Released
- Taped
- Straz Center for the Performing Arts, Tampa
- Runtime
- 64 min
- Where
- Prime Video
- Director
- Jim Gaffigan
- Topics
- Before
- Comedy Monster (2021)
- After
- The Skinny (2024)
More from Jim Gaffigan
-
The Skinny
Hulu
-
Comedy Monster
Netflix
-
The Pale Tourist
Prime Video
-
Quality Time
Prime Video
-
Noble Ape
Comedy Dynamics
-
Cinco
Netflix
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