Which comedian did you look forward to, but their act died on stage?

Tracy Morgan owes me money! Drove 2.5 hours and got a hotel room to see him, and he got booed off the stage within 10-15 minutes because he was so drunk he could barely stand up and you couldn’t understand a single slurred word he said. The venue refused to refund anyone.

Chris Tucker, holy shit was he bad. I got free tickets & wasn’t very familiar with him, but expected a somewhat funny show. Now I f****** hate the dude. Jokes sucked & were drawn out painfully long. He told this SUPER unique “joke” that involved an Arab person being on a plane & him being worried about them hijacking it. That was the whole shitty joke. It should’ve taken less than 1 minute, but he spent at least 10 minutes on it minimum. He would talk about every detail of boarding the plane & throw in a loud “alalalalalala” after it while pacing back and forth. Like: I saw the person waiting for the plane, ALALALALALALA. I got online board the plane, ALALALALALALA. I walked to my seat, ALALALALALALA. I sat down, ALALALALALALA. The other person sat down, ALALALALALA. No f****** wonder we got up to leave & over half of the attendees had also left. He also had this amazing… joke? Story? Imaginary scenario? That he described that just left me raging. He was just talking about waking up in the middle of the night to pee, get a drink, & whatever else. He spent sooooo long just pretending to stumble around on stage & grumbling sounds. Like: I gotta pee in the middle of the night, dkgotnebwhdjdkwkwndienxoe *slowly pretend to bump into every item in the house* Forgot to flush the toilet, dkgotnebwhdjdkwkwndienxoe *slowly pretend to bump into every item in the house* Need a drink, dkgotnebwhdjdkwkwndienxoe *slowly pretend to bump into every item in the house* Wife asked if I washed my hands, dkgotnebwhdjdkwkwndienxoe *slowly pretend to bump into every item in the house* Want a snack, dkgotnebwhdjdkwkwndienxoe *slowly pretend to bump into every item in the house* My descriptions can’t even scratch the surface of just how infuriating his performance was, & (surprise surprise) they made us bag our phones to enter, so no one will ever truly know the pain I live with. 

Kevin James. Saw him at the NAC in Ottawa. His opener killed it and when James came onstage he told the audience: “See? I told him not to be so funny because it makes my job harder. This guy’s right!?” Everyone laughed, thinking he was really going to bring it. He did not. All he could muster was polite laughter. He actually did a bit about encores and how no other profession does them. He said: “I don’t do encores. I’ll kill it for you guys but I won’t come back onstage after my set’s done.” His act was so bad I was very grateful he didn’t come back on.

Dylan Moran, paid what was then to me and insane amount of money, he turned up 45 minutes late, so drunk that he was barely coherent and delivered a 35 minute set that was largely spent arguing with someone in the front row.

Saw Jay Leno in 2019 and he was still doing Monica Lewinsky jokes We, as 40ish year olds were amongst the youngest there and it was obvious Leno was just recycling old monologue jokes 0/10 will not see him again

Craig Robinson was a let down. He mostly just fucked around on a piano and started singing "take your panties off" over and over

My mom goes to Vegas a LOT. Goes to a lot of shows whether or not she knows who the star is. 2-3 years ago she said 'i actually know who this guy is, its Brad Garrett from Everybody Loves Raymond, he was SO funny in that show' Next day, she said 'it was probably just about the worst 'comedy' show shes not only seen, but imagined' And thats the day my 70 year old mother understood that tv shows are written by writers, and standup can go off the rails VERY fast

TJ Miller. It was so bad they literally refunded our money lol. He was beyond blackout drunk.

I didn't think he would be good, but my sister got my parents tickets to Tracy Morgan because they liked 30 rock. Hands down the worst show they ever have been to. They wanted to leave but didn't because he was harassing people who did. His comedy was apparently just talking about wanting to sleep with women. Fun stuff

So I saw Pablo Francisco on Comedy Central Presents: loved it He was in my town so I got tickets. 🤦🏾‍♀️ so much coke sweating, rambling, and abrupt anti-black commentary, specifically anti-black women. I'm a black woman. What a time to waste my night and money at my first stand up show I'd ever gone to A week later I saw Chris Titus and he was AMAZING

I went to a Norm McDonald show last week. Completely dead, not even a little funny.

Was excited to see Sarah Silverman. The entire show was about her father dying. There were no bits, jokes, anything funny. She just told stories about the last few days of his life. It was like a therapy session she was being paid for. Absolutely terrible.

Tom Segura. I went to see him around the time that he was getting sued by Louisiana, or had some sort of dispute with Louisiana in one regard or another. Like 45 minutes of his set was just ripping on Louisiana, and hey, don't get me wrong, there's a lot to trash Louisiana for. But I guess I just expected it to move on after a while. When I saw the special he put out from that same tour, he had trimmed the Louisiana stuff down to a very lean 2 or 3 minutes, which should really speak to the quality of the other 42 minutes of his act that night that I saw him.

Bert Kreischer basically just took his shirt off, talked about his family and drank until he turns purple… I’m not sure what I was expecting

Tommy Cooper.

When I was in college, Craig Robinson came and did a show. I loved the office, and Darryl is a great character, so it sounded like fun. He showed up drunk, and wasn't funny. He sat at a piano and sang some songs. The only one I remember, had this repetitive refrain where he just keeps singing, "Take your panties off." He kept trying to make it into a sing along, but everyone was just sitting there awkwardly because nothing he had done so far was funny enough to get the audience on his side.

I saw Sarah Silverman almost 20 years ago and the show itself was good but SO short. It wasn’t even 45 mins. When she walked off the stage, we all hung around because we thought it was the intermission. The theater people had to come around and tell us that the show was over and to clear out. We were all shocked. 

David Koechner. Only time I have ever walked out of a show. 

I caught a Mitch Hedberg show on a bad night. He was wasted and chugged red wine the entire time. Poor guy and his demons. RIP

Chris Rock (before the slap stuff) Saw him in Glasgow and his show just kinda doesn’t work here. Most of the jokes revolve around black people in the US and it just wasn’t landing at all. Too many non-US, white folk. I don’t think many people understood the references to an experience that is completely foreign to us

Bill Cosby about 10-15 years ago before all this “difficulties” came to light. He was profoundly unfunny. Just an unfunny old man lightly ranting in a chair.

RUSSELL BRAND. My gf at the time wanted to go and i had my opinions on the guy. He hit on a 16yr old girl who was with her parents on and off for the entire show. He would circle back to her any time he made a sexual joke. By the end of the show, the crowd was audibly groaning at his disgusting behaviour. I've never seen a concert hall clear out that fast.

Not died, but Seinfeld wasn’t as funny as I thought he would be. Chris Rock just talked about his divorce a lot and seemed more bitter than anything else. Chris Tucker wasn’t really funny at all.

Mitch Hedberg. To be fair, it wasn't so much his act that failed on stage but he was just SO hammered that he couldn't get through the set. Loved him in college, was so excited to see him, and left incredibly disappointed. Still love him though. RIP.

Went and saw Pauly Shore in college when he was very popular. He did his comedy album exactly and the entire audience knew it by heart. They started finishing the jokes for him. He was so very pissed but had no other material to switch to.

Ilana Glazer. I'm a huge Broad City fan but her stand up has been rough to say the least.

I was at the Dave Chappell show where he brought Elon on stage.

Fluffy. I had great expectations. It was funny but the constant interruptions by him and the other comedians talking about merch was shitty. The show itself was above average good.

Wanda Sykes. She actually read her whole act off of a piece of paper and she just was not funny at all. Super disappointing.

As a Filipino, was excited to see Jokoy's first show here. And then first he just proudly said he didn't prepare anything and it f****** showed. He just did some terrible crowdwork and then ranted about he's mad that people are saying his Filipino-bait movie is a Filipino-bait. For a guy whose schtick is living in a Filipino household, way to go for not even preparing for the country where the culture your whole thing is based from.

I was a huge Nevermind the Buzzcocks fan back in the day, so much so that when I was in Edinburgh for the Fringe one year, I booked tickets to see Simon Amstel.  Bar none, the worst thing I ever watched, and I sat through Mark Walbergs The Happening in the cinema.  We walked out after 20 minutes of him repeating over and over again how he liked to have sex with boys so young and thin that they looked ill. It was weird the first time he said it, uncomfortable the second and by the 7th or 8th time there were people booing and telling him to get off the stage. 

Jim Jeffries. First half was good then he starting relentlessly body shaming people in the crowd (over the big screen) then when people started booing him he got pissed off and doubled down. It got ugly!

Tom Green was recently touring Canada. Doing the most awkward musical performances he could think of, basically the goal was to get people to walk out. He would start at 9 and go well past midnight some shows, I only realized what he was doing when I got home and looked up previous shows on Listnook. It was both terrible and Meta at the same time. I left weirded out but thinking back it’s kind of genius and sooo on brand.

Dave Chappelle is now more of a talker, with a few jokes in them. He used to be a phenomenally hilarious story teller, but seeing him, I felt like I was being lectured a lot

The one I really looked forward to was Joel McHale. This was a long time ago. He was touring after hosting The Soup. I found The Soup funny but he was meh. I guess he had good writers on that show. I've seen many comics that have just knocked it out of the park.

Saw David Cross recently, really bad show. I’m a big fan, and it was way early in his tour, but it was bad bad

Unfortunately Janeane Garofalo. I’ve seen other recordings from her career and was looking forward to it. She had a couple of fun quips but nothing that made the set memorable. It felt very aged ranting.

Reginald D Hunter. I'd seen him on so many panel shows and he was always hilarious. But live he was not very good. He seemed a bit nervous, and his DGAF persona simply didn't work.

Fluffy, guy is so bitter

Any comedian where more then 25% of the show is crowd work. It always feels like a report from a kid that didn't read the assigned book. 

Leslie Jones. The entire act devolved into yelling "V*****" over and over to see if it got a rise out of the audience. Very weird.

Wanda Sykes. She did a paid event and she was so ill prepared and lazy about it. She had a notebook on stage that she repeatedly paged through to decide what bits to do during her set, while we all sat there and waited. It was boring and unfunny.

Adam Sandler…… he was okay.. but he brought out all his movie buddies and they made it political and that killed the comedy mood for the rest of the night (looking at you Rob)

Larry the cable guy. Ex was a huge fan, I wanted to leave after 10 mins. The act got stale fast, and he was on stage for almost an hour. He had an opening act, which i remember was marginally funny.

John Cleese. Went to “Last time to see me before I die”. He was almost dead already. Boring and like he did not enjoy it.

Saw Bill Burr in a tiny central California c***** venue and it was obviously just a show he was using to try out new jokes. The jokes began as his well known greatest hits then moved into un polished, no set up jokes. He also got super pissed at a drunk heckler and kicked him out. The room didnt have the energy to be on Bills side so it was awkward.

Drew Carey. Warm-up acts had the audience almost in tears. Then Drew Carey got up and every single thing he said flat lined. After about 10 minutes, he started insulting the audience and local community. He finished by laughing about leaving the water running on every faucet in his hotel room because he knew we were in a drought and on water rations. F that guy.

Jeremy Piven. He kept making jokes about covid and women in LA. We were like dude this is Edmonton, Alberta. Really cant relate to the dating scene in LA. Also, Nick Kroll was pretty terrible. Needless to say, I will not be attending that comedy fest again this year.

I saw John Leguizamo a few years ago. Worst show I've ever been to. All he did was try new material, which consisted of him reading off a laptop mostly doing impressions of historical figures. No crowd engagement nothing, barely made eye contact with crowd. Wish I could have met him post show, but he had to catch a flight. No disrespect to the guy, but I think I like him more as an actor than a comedian.

Ricky Gervais a year or so ago. His stand up act was at most points him just being an old man yelling at woke things. Not even making jokes. At one point he was saying how he's going to leave the heating on and the windows open to annoy environmentalists. At that point some guy stood up and shouted "you tell em Ricky!". It felt like a weird political rally.

Michael Richards…..tough set 

John Mulaney. It was when he was sober. It was obvious he had just done an album and was trying new, unpolished material.  He made fun of our city for 20 minutes. Tried new jokes that bombed for 20 minutes. Then made fun of his autistic bus driver for 20 minutes, then left.  His opener was a black dude that did a “f*** white people” act to a 90% white audience.  No one laughed. No one clapped. 0 stars.  Edit: I should add that this was right after his sober special. So he needed to start over and make new material. And you could tell he didn’t have much yet. 

Jim Gaffigan a few weeks ago in Chicago. I was so looking forward to his show and couldn't have been more bored. He also didn't even stay on stage an hour. Very disappointing. On the flip side of it, I saw Lucy Darling a week later and couldn't stop laughing. 2 hours straight and she never slowed. A most pleasant surprise.

Jeff Dunham. Way more of a racist act in person then his shows on the streaming services. At some point I felt like he didn't care what he said because the "puppet" said it.

Adam Sandler. Saw him on stage in St. Louis in the early 90’s and ended up walking out. So bad

I wouldn't say he "died" on stage, but Jerry Seinfeld was pretty meh. He's a comedian that's considered top tier, but too often I found myself forcing laughter just to try getting my money's worth.