Exclaim! is reviewing every standup comedy special currently available on Netflix Canada, including this one. You can find a complete list of reviews so far here.
Standup comedy is one of the only aspects of entertainment where age doesn't really matter, and Eddie Pepitone is sweltering proof. Like Rodney Dangerfield, Lewis Black and Ron Shock before him, the L.A.-based comedian's career didn't fully launch until he was in his mid-40s, becoming a regular on Late Night with Conan O'Brien (playing the perfectly apropos recurring role of "New York City Heckler"). As he's now a regular at L.A.'s UCB Theater, a repeat guest on the WTF with Marc Maron podcast and a voice on Bob's Burgers, Pepitone has cemented his reputation as the old, self-deprecating, highly sensitive comedian, or to borrow the title of the 2012 documentary about his life: The Bitter Buddha.
On his first-ever special, released in 2014, the 55 year-old returns to his hometown of Brooklyn, NY for a workmanlike, no-frills 70-minute set. Showing just how smart, politically charged and informed his material can be, Pepitone plays before a modest crowd full of young New York hipsters who can hang with any subject he manically chooses to swing into.
When he's covering material based on completely original thoughts (like how corporations should just "drop the act" and start threatening people to purchase their products, the strain of union reps during the failing economy to keep their people employed, even if they're bleeding, and his hilarious impression on a too-honest lounge singer), or when he's giving his take on archetypal comedic fodder (like cats or Yelp! Reviews) Pepitone's style of joke telling (read: yelling) is refreshingly honest and vulnerable.
In Ruins is so refreshing because Pepitone is so effortlessly funny, to the point where he always seems like he's telling it exactly the way it is. That's because he is.
Standup comedy is one of the only aspects of entertainment where age doesn't really matter, and Eddie Pepitone is sweltering proof. Like Rodney Dangerfield, Lewis Black and Ron Shock before him, the L.A.-based comedian's career didn't fully launch until he was in his mid-40s, becoming a regular on Late Night with Conan O'Brien (playing the perfectly apropos recurring role of "New York City Heckler"). As he's now a regular at L.A.'s UCB Theater, a repeat guest on the WTF with Marc Maron podcast and a voice on Bob's Burgers, Pepitone has cemented his reputation as the old, self-deprecating, highly sensitive comedian, or to borrow the title of the 2012 documentary about his life: The Bitter Buddha.
On his first-ever special, released in 2014, the 55 year-old returns to his hometown of Brooklyn, NY for a workmanlike, no-frills 70-minute set. Showing just how smart, politically charged and informed his material can be, Pepitone plays before a modest crowd full of young New York hipsters who can hang with any subject he manically chooses to swing into.
When he's covering material based on completely original thoughts (like how corporations should just "drop the act" and start threatening people to purchase their products, the strain of union reps during the failing economy to keep their people employed, even if they're bleeding, and his hilarious impression on a too-honest lounge singer), or when he's giving his take on archetypal comedic fodder (like cats or Yelp! Reviews) Pepitone's style of joke telling (read: yelling) is refreshingly honest and vulnerable.
In Ruins is so refreshing because Pepitone is so effortlessly funny, to the point where he always seems like he's telling it exactly the way it is. That's because he is.
