Ration Reality

Tonight was the season premiere for season 5 of Last Comic Standing.  I somehow managed to miss out on season 1 of this show, but watched seasons 2 and 3 religiously.  Season 4 managed to fly completely under my radar – not quite sure how – which leads us to season 5. 

I really wanted to hate Bill Bellamy for hosting it instead of Jay Mohr, but he actually did a better job than I expected, so that was good.  He wasn’t memorable, but he was competent.  The judges for the auditions are three of the season 2 / 3 contestants – Alonzo Bodden, noted internet gay sex peddler Ant, and Kathleen Madigan - and they were just as funny as ever.  (In Kathleen’s case, that means ‘not very.’)

 The New York City auditions were a severe disappointment.  It’s hard to believe that the Big Apple’s vein of comedy has been tapped dry, but … the product they brought up was pretty disappointing.  Six contestants from NYC were chosen to move on.  They were:

1.  Dwayne Kennedy.  Black gentleman, fucking hilarious.  He might unfortunately get tagged as self-hating, though: his jokes mostly played off racial stereotypes relating to black men.  He was definitely the funniest of the people from New York, and I’ll be keeping an eye on this one.   

2.  Joe DeVito.  Somewhat funny, but I wouldn’t be able to put up with him for a 30 minute comedy central special, based on what I saw tonight.  His best bit was comparing his appearance (white male, birth-control glasses, button-down shirt, kinda fat and sweaty) to your stereotypical workplace spree killer.  It was funny, but I don’t think it can carry him for too long. 

3.  Amy Schumer.  Relatively weak as a comedian, but the funniest of the three women to move on.  I don’t remember what her routine even was, but I do recall chuckling a couple times.

4.  Lori Chase.  Jersey Girl: ’nuff said.  She beat the fifth place guy because I actually remembered who she was, in spite of not liking her particularly. 

5.  The dude whose name I can’t remember.  He must not have been very good, since when they announced he was moving on, I couldn’t remember having even seen him perform.  I’ll give him fifth place out of six, though, because he didn’t approach the sheer level of suck of the person I put in sixth.

 6.  Jane Condon.  Jane won NYC’s  ’Capital One No Hassle Pass’ to the next round.  This appears, unfortunately, to be proof that either America has no fucking taste whatsoever or that there may have been parts of her routine that influenced the voters, but were not shown on television.  I’m hoping it was the latter, but I’m afraid it might have been the former.  We’ll see how she does in future episodes.

They moved on to Canada next.

One guy that I wish had made it here but didn’t.  He was a big gay guy, built about like Will Sasso in his glory days.  Utterly hilarious.  Had a good string of jokes about airbags in cars – having one deploy felt like getting punched in the chest by a lesbian, etc.  Sucks that he didn’t move on.

 The contestants that did move on were:

1.  Gerry Dee.  Funniest of the Canada crowd, but he’s not exactly an amateur – he was apparently on season 4 of LCS, but eliminated in early rounds.  Did a string of retard jokes which are always funny, because there’s just so much material to draw from every day life.  Best of all the comedians we saw tonight.

2.  Mel Silverback.  Gimmick comedian – picture Hawkeye from M*A*S*H wearing a gorilla suit.  He was … eh, he’s funny but I don’t think his gimmick will hold up for that long.  Side note: I suspect he might have done a voice on Matt Groening’s Futurama at one point.

3.  Debra DiGiovanni – High energy, kind of a big girl, looks like my downstairs neighbor’s wife.  She ran with a lot of single-spinster-cat lady jokes, which were … eh, mildly funny, but I’m a guy so I probably won’t get them.  Now, the camera swept over the crowd a few times, and it was funny to watch the men and the young women chuckling, while some older women who looked like drag queens doing a Phyllis Diller act looked like they were falling out of their chairs.   For tonight I put her in 3rd place of Canada, but I suspect she’ll last longer than a lot of the other contestants.

 Final stop for the night was San Antonio, Texas.  Again, there were three contestants picked out of everyone that tried out.  I picked the three that it’d be, but the last bit of the show I was watching in the bedroom while my wife went to sleep so I didn’t write down their names.  My humblest apologies!  There was a black gentleman chosen who was mildly entertaining, a redhaired white girl who acted like she was on quaaludes, and a very manly gay woman who was utterly fucking hilarious.  I don’t know how she survived long enough in Texas to make it to the comedy club, but FUCK she was funny.  I’m definitely looking forward to seeing more of her.

My one and only complaint about this show tonight was the length.  It was two fucking hours long, and it just had no reason to be.  It could just as easily have been broken up into two shows, and it would have been a lot better.  I’m hoping that next week they’ll do just that, if they have two hours to give us.  Bump off the endless reruns of Seinfeld or Friends, give us some new programming.  I could feel my attention slipping pretty bad during the second hour tonight.  No matter how much I enjoyed the show (and I did enjoy it, very much), if I hadn’t been planning to write this article I would have just tuned it out and found something else to do instead.