Jim Gaffigan: The Pale Tourist (TV Series) Jim Gaffigan: Spanish American (2020) User Reviews

Gaffigan Looks Tired

[Johnny_West · 7/10 · 22 October 2021]

I have seen all of his comedy specials, and they are all alot of fun. I am not sure what happened with this one. Jim Gaffigan looks really tired. I guess he had been on a long tour around the world, which must be exciting. I think this show was not a complete show, as it was only 50 minutes.

In the old days, comics like Bob Hope used to do the USO shows and made fun of the local customs. It was funny back then but it was not that funny in modern times.

Some of Gaffigan's remarks about Spain really sounded offensive. Like he said Spain had come to America and taken all the gold, but where was the gold in Spain? JG said he had traveled all over Spain and had not seen any gold, and had not seen anything that was worth buying with gold!! Wow!!

I lived in Spain for a few months as a student, and it is a beautiful country, and has tons of churches and cathedrals with lots of gold decorations and ornaments. Also there is the Palace in El Escorial, which is gigantic and is full of all kinds of treasures, paintings, scultures, etc.

Towards the last 25 minutes of the show JG lets go of the Spain remarks, and focuses on his comedy, and that is a lot better.

Jim stifled by a lousy audience

[Zipper69 · 5/10 · 31 July 2020]

Jim always researches foreign locations to give him material to riff on. A classic example is the first episode of this show, filmed in Canada, the audience was interested, amused and responsive to Jim's cracks. Barcelona was 180 degrees away from that. Jim's material was as good and fresh as ever but the audience response was muted and never warmed up over the entire set. Even if the audience was mostly Spanish, I have to assume their English comprehension was good enough to know and appreciate Jim's work, but they were woefully short of showing they "got" the many local references.

"You guys don't even need drugs here."

[classicsoncall · 8/10 · 26 May 2024]

This was the second entry in Jim Gaffigan's 'Pale Tourist' comedy special, making it perhaps the shortest series on record. That's probably something Jim could make fun of all by itself. Performing before a local Spanish crowd, the audience here was a little more subdued than the one he did before a Canadian audience. Gaffigan attempted to circumvent the language barrier with extensive references to local words and customs, with humorous observations on siestas, flamenco dances and paella. Things seemed to get a little uncomfortable with mentions of Spanish holiday customs like 'caganer' and 'caga tio', which I won't try to explain here; you'll just have to watch the special. The running of the bulls in Pamplona got its own particular emphasis, prompting Jim to utter his funniest observation in my summary line above. You have to credit Gaffigan with the ability to come up with these humorous observations for each unique show, seeing as how the cultures of Canada and Spain are so different.