Is the Last Comic Standing Really Funny?
Last Comic Standing is Josh Blue!
It’s not that you need a PhD in the psychology of humor to write about such television programs, but it is tough to capture or encapsulate the appeal of really good comedic shows.
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I mean, if I could translate with any accuracy and effectiveness the likes of, say, Seinfeld, with its hallmark repetition of lines for comic effect or its relatedness of events, instances, and issues the characters share, for example, then I would be ON the show…or WRITING it. |
So it goes with a blockbuster entertainment show like Last Comic Standing.
Still, I feel impelled to sing the praises of the efforts to bring back some damned levity (if not outright raucous laughter) to our pitifully stressful, overworked, overburdened, overwhelmed lives.
We haven’t had any new good, cathartic comedy on primetime television for a long time. Seinfeld, much to the desperate dismay of thousands, went off the new episodes list in 1998, though, thankfully, it did not leave our lives, being in re-run on three different stations. Friends, though not necessarily of the same caliber as Sein but with some characters (Chandler Bing—brilliantly rendered by Matthew Perry) and some moments keeping us all agiggle, is also no longer in sindication. And we can’t expect Ellen Degeneres to carry all the burden—though she does a damned brilliant job of it.
So unless we can afford the cable channels that give us new comedic films and running series, such as Dane Cook’s Tourgasm and Entourage, two rip your groin laughing shows, we are quite dependent upon Last Comic Standing.
Last Comic Standing is, of course, a GAME show in the typical sense of reality TV game shows today, so it has its weak moments, wherein we have to put up with re-caps and repetition that is not of the humorous vein. And yes, because it follows the template of process of elimination, the first few weeks bring some poopy moments: some of the Last Comic Standing contestants have one or maybe two fresh riffs or jokes but also drag us through their less than sparkling repertoires.
Rebecca , for instance, does this whole gesturing goofiness that is at first novel and quirky enough to elicit a laugh, as she camps up this overzealous predatory look and lurches about the stage with an exaggerated delight (exaggeration, of course, being a major bone in the spine of comedy). But then she goes into a spiel of scatological adventures caused by overindulging in those fat free chips (with diuretic olestra) and she loses us. (She also loses her spot in the Last Comic Standing line-up.
But then, then…there are the absolutely hysterics-producing comics—like Ty Barnett, who as a black man starts his set by greeting the audience, thanking them for or commenting on the great applause and size of the audience, and then smirking that were this any other time it would be called an “auction”.
Ty launches into more absolutely original stuff, discussing, for example, how it would suck if Superman got married, for then when he got a divorce he would have to relinquish HALF of all his powers. Josh Blue, who has cerebral palsy that he works into his act, is so self-effacing, so self-deprecating, that the jerks and yanks and twitches that come with cp boost his raised eyebrow silliness and only enhance his borderline sick humor (I said BORDERLINE.)
He pokes fun of his condition with a sarcasm that could get old but doesn’t and even takes his tyuh attitude and tone into targeting others (which is hard to do effectively), roasting Gabriel Iglesias (a fellow Last Comic Standing contestant and LCSH roommate who was also funny as hell until he blew it all off by sneaking a cell phone or blueberry onto the show), heckling hecklers (in an intended heckle-off), and even, like the alternately styled but equally funny Chris Porter—who screams at the women in the audience that it is all our fault!
Even the often much under-appreciated host of last Comic Standing this year, Anthony Clark, who is usually best known for his stellar Yes, Dear role but who was also neglected as a comedic star in Boston Common—as the cheeky, irreverent Boyd Pritchett—has some sweet moments, which fill out the hour of Last Comic Standing, making the show just awesome enough to carry us through the week until the next episode.
Is Josh Blue, the Last Comic Standing Really Funny?
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