My TV Musings

Since I’m recommending this series to anyone who has never seen it I thought I’d take you back to see why I like it.

It all began in the Summer of 2003 when Jay Mohr hosted the inaugural season. That season split the show between the contestants being in the house socializing and being on the stage performing. Dat Phan annoyed me the most of all the comics because his humor was strictly about his family and making fun of his Asian roots and the fact that his parents owned a laundry. I understand that racial humor has its place in stand-up comedy, though we may not all agree on just how much is too much, but this guy needed to branch out and not be a one-note comic. It just got old real quick!

Anyway, he was so annoying that one day in the house several of the comics, primarily led by Dave Mordal and Rich Vos, decided to play hide-and-seek and to leave Dat Phan alone, letting him hide for several hours. It was hilarious to watch since Dat had distanced himself from the others long before that.

Well, Dat started getting high praise from the audiences when doing his stand-up and it was tough to watch, but I was confident that my favorite, Dave Mordal, would finish in the top and maybe win it all, that Dat couldn’t have a chance with his one-topic comedy!

How wrong I was - Dat was able to win over the audience and when all was said and done for that season, Dat won the whole thing, with Dave not even ranking in the top five! Well, we chalked it up to a California audience voting rather than allowing all America to vote, but it still left a bad taste in my mouth for the series, that was for sure!

Season 2 came around the following summer in 2004. With this group it was harder to pick just one that I wanted to win so it was fun watching them compete, and no one was as annoying as Dat Phan had been. I ended up with a group of 4 that I liked best: Jay London, Tammy Pescatelli, Alonzo Bodden, and John Heffron. They each had a different style: Jay was the homeless, self-deprecating one always saying “I’ll just be over here”, moving to the side of the stage not to annoy anyone; Tammy was the New York, Italian, mobster’s daughter type, very outspoken; Alonzo Bodden was a large, good-looking, bald, black man, and his humor was quite refreshing, non-stereotypical; and John Heffron was your average, mid-30s white guy talking about life before marriage/children and life after, always very humorous! The group got along in the house much better than the Season one comics, so it was a more enjoyable show. In the end, it came down to two: Alonzo and John, and, though I couldn’t pick one, America voted and John Heffron won.

Season 2 was doing so well that, while it was still airing, NBC agreed on a third season to begin as soon as the fall of 2004. It was called the “Battle of the Best” and created a competition between the final ten comedians from the first 2 seasons. The concept was interesting, and Dave Mordal came in as runner-up to the winner, Alonzo Bodden!

Because Season 3 fell so closely to Season 2, ratings suffered and NBC cancelled the series before the finale aired. It was very disappointing to those who watched the show faithfully and eventually Comedy Central picked up the episode and aired it.

The next season, Season 4, aired in the summer of 2006. Unfortunately Jay Mohr was otherwise occupied and Anthony Clark (of Yes, Dear fame) was the new host. Talk about a piece of cardboard! He was terrible! But the ratings were great and the comics made up for Clark’s lack of ability.

Unbelievably, one of the best contestants of this season was Josh Blue, who has cerebral palsy. I mean, who wants to laugh at someone with cerebral palsy? But he made us laugh and we loved him! While there were a few others that we liked also, Josh rose to the top and won Season 4! There was one contestant, Gabriel, who got kicked off the show for bringing a cell phone to the house and communicating with his family!

Next up: Season 5 - coming to NBC on Wednesday, June 13th, starting at 8PM Central! Bill Bellamy will host. A new twist: competitors will come from aroound the world, not just the USA, so that should be interesting to see if there are radically different types of humor elsewhere.

I plan to watch and highly recommend the show, at least give it a try!

This entry was posted on Saturday, June 9th, 2007 at 6:28 pm and is filed under Last Comic Standing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.