Last Comic Standing: Season 6 Episode 3

I’m late again! I know, I know, but I do have another excuse this time. My tivo failed to tape the first half hour of the show, starting at 8:30 instead of 8. I don’t know if this was a screwup on their part or mine. Actually, I’m pretty lucky that I got anything at all because my power was out all the previous evening from a pretty bad storm and my cable went out at 11 Thursday night, so it sneaked through between those two outages.

If I wasn’t committing myself to write these reviews, I would have just blown off the missing first half hour, but I need to give you, the reader, a full and informed opinion. I got the first part of the episode through *ahem* other means, so I’ve seen the whole thing now.

Before we get into the auditions for this season, I’d like to note the “best of the worst” top 10 countdown that aired throughout the episode. Some of these auditions were pretty bad, but they included the alien warrior comedian, who I thought should have actually gotten a shot in my review of the first episode. Interestingly, all of the other comedians who got into “best of the worst” didn’t really do standup: they danced, or boxed, or fumbled about the stage, but they didn’t tell jokes with the certain rhythm and cadence that the alien warrior at least understands how to do. So, I’m ambivalent. He probably shouldn’t have been included in this set, but more screentime is probably always good when you’re a comedian, right?

Okay, on to the auditions: first we are dropped into San Francisco, where French Stewart and Josh Gomez are the judges. They started strong: Jason Downs, the first comedian, made me laugh in the first 2 minutes of the show. The second audition, however, was billed as the “most shocking audition” of the show.

I didn’t find it that shocking.

This “most shocking audition” basically consisted of a stand-up cursing and being belligerent, and the judges doing their best to respond while saving their own faces. It seems to me that their clever ripostes were the interesting part of the whole thing, but nothing about it was all that shocking.

Overall, San Francisco was a pretty strong group. You could take your pick from those who made it through to the evening show and end up pretty strong. When everyone is good like that, I mostly end up being biased towards the pretty girls and the nerdy guys. For example, last season I was rooting all season for Amy Schumer and Matt Kirshen. I think the producers generally agree with me on those criteria, too (the producers select the winners, not the judges, right?) Will Jeff Dye wear that flourescent shirt all season if he makes it through?

Since it’s my thing to choose someone who didn’t make it through who I thought should have been given a chance, I’ll choose Jesse Case. I was going to say Sky and Nancy Collins, the duo from Orange County, but they introduced themselves using the same material at both auditions, and usually that’s a bad sign. Also, they reminded me of the “two douchebags” sketches on SNL.

Moving on to Toronto, host Bill Bellamy starts us out dressed in a mountie costume. Isn’t that illegal? Impersonating an officer of the law or something seems like it would apply. The judges in Toronto are Dave Foley and Richard Kind, who seem to do a decent job.

Only two comics are selected from Toronto, just like last week in Houston. It also looked like they didn’t have too many people at the showcase, I guess how many they select must be based on how many solid comics they found. Everyone in the crowd is so upset when they announce they are only choosing two, and I think the audience at home feels the same way.

We had some more duos and even a trio today. I wonder how many multiple-comic groups they are going to let move through to the challenges. It seems like it could be hard to design challenges where a duo wouldn’t have an advantage over a single comic, so my guess is they will only let one duo move through. I think we have three going to Vegas so far, if I’m counting correctly, so we shall see if my prediction holds out.

Brian Lazanik successfully made an archeology joke. I give him mad props for that. Derek Forgie is immensely high energy and if he played that character on the show, he would get pretty annoying pretty fast. I figured the producers wouldn’t let him get chosen for that very reason, but later in the show they did an interview with him and he wasn’t in character, so my theory went out the window. But we can always blog about these things, right?

I know I talk a fair piece about the duos but I think that the Williamson Playboys should have moved forward. Some people might not care for the musical acts, but the show seems to be willing explore that space a little more this season and I would have liked to see them move through, at least to Vegas.

I’ve sort of fallen into a pattern here and I worry I won’t know what to write about when we get into the actual house and challenges part of the show, but I had strong opinions last season and hopefully I will this season as well.

All my last comic standing posts.