This is the Dane Cook quandary. Around his second album, Retaliation, he became so popular that the inevitable backlash began. He was touring huge arenas. Retaliation was a three-disc package that should have been a two-disc package. Some people mentioned that, and the die-hard Dane fans, flashing Cook's Su-Fi sign, wouldn't tolerate it on his chat boards. Just about everyone weighed in, from magazines to fans to other comics. And it got to the point where you couldn't defend Cook without being an apologist, and you couldn't criticize him without being a "hater."

That's the environment that Cook is working in now, the water he had to tread thinking about his new special, last night's ISolated INcident. And there were already conflicting ideas surrounding the hype for the show. There were the constant commercials hyping how unbelievable the show is, setting an unfair standard from the very beginning. We were told this would be unlike anything we have seen from Cook, an innovative, groundbreaking special.

If we can step back from all of that for a moment, from the marketing and opinion-making of the past few years, what we have is a Dane Cook special where he's not yelling, he's not stomping around a stadium. He's talking about his parents' deaths, and how the backlash actually got to him. It's personal stuff, more than we've ever heard from him before.

There is a slightly different technical angle -- the special was shot with one camera in a continuous shot with some inset shots of audience members. But it still feels like a guy onstage in front of a live audience. And Cook hasn't abandoned his silly or scatological side, which is part of his comic DNA. But he is still stretching himself as a comedian here, and love him or hate him, he deserves credit for that. If you're a fan who stopped paying attention when the hype got a bit much, give ISolated INcident a shot.