Tough Love

Lisa Lampanelli builds her hour around a simple premise: nobody in the room, and nobody in the tabloids, is safe from catching a stray. The self-appointed “Queen of Mean” spends a solid chunk of her time working the front row, throwing out racially charged and sexually explicit insults that her crowds explicitly pay to hear. She anchors the back half of the set with a prepared bit titled the “Roast of Worthless Americans,” dedicating her hostility to easy but satisfying targets like Kate Gosselin and the cast of Jersey Shore.

Filmed at the Rialto Square Theatre in Joliet, Illinois, Tough Love premiered on Comedy Central in early 2011. At the time, Lampanelli was a fixture of the network’s roasts and had just finished taking swings at Donald Trump on his own broadcast. The hour incorporates her personal life, featuring an extended segment on her marriage to a man she affectionately calls “Jimmy Big Balls”—a guy who apparently expresses affection by shaving “I love you” into his back hair. The result is loud, aggressive, and entirely unapologetic.