“The ever-funny Mr. Ant!” is how Bellamy Bill introduced Celebrity Talent Scout Ant. He described Alonzo Bodden as “hilarious and funny.” (Aren’t the same thing?) He introduced Kathleen Madigan as “sassy.” We don’t think of Kathleen as sassy. We can think of many positive adjectives for her, but sassy is not one of them. Bellamy Bill is not cut out for this. They should have stopped the taping and re-done the intros.

And he really should get some sort of Master of Ceremonies Thesaurus and figure out new and fresh ways of saying, “Let’s give it up…” Bellamy Bill: How about you give up “Let’s give it up!” May we suggest, “Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome…” Anything would be better.

No emcee on a network show should ask the audience, “Are you ready for some crazy shit?” They hadda bleep the host? What’s up with that? Not even Joe Rogan ever did that.

Can anyone explain why Tom Arnold is in the house? Anyone? Can Arnold even give a plausible explanation for why he was there? Oh, sure, he got a paycheck, but that is not so much an explanation for his presence as it was an incentive for him to be there, so we’re still not sure why he was there. A cardboard cutout would have functioned as well. There were people in the audience who got more face time than Arnold did.

And speaking of people in the audience, we spotted a couple of people that we saw all last week in Montreal… must’ve been agents or managers. And, speaking of Montreal, we neglected to mention two of the 32 who were at the JFL Festival– Deb DiGiovanni, who made it into the top ten in last week’s episode and Amy Schumer, who made it in from this week’s batch.

In doing some research and tooling around the archives of our site today, we re-read some of our coverage of LCS from last year. Boy, oh, boy, were we pissed! We ripped into a comic or two and we were generally very worked up about the contest as it unfolded last year. This year, however, we just can’t seem to get all that worked up about it. What’s different? Is it us? Or does this year’s LCS seem… flat?

And we’re somewhat deflated because, we just watched a show with performances by 16 comedians and we were stunned at how little we laughed. Some of it is because of time constraints, editing, material choice and the natural limitations of network television. Some of it is just because of our personal preferences– some comics just don’t ring our bell. That’s not a bad thing, not a good thing, it’s just a thing. But some of the comics, that we know– firsthand– are funny, and who usually make us laugh… didn’t make us laugh. We laughed four times, at four different comics. (And, coincidentally, those four didn’t make it to the next round.)

Those numbers should be reversed– we should have found a dozen or more comics to be entertaining and maybe not have been tickled by a handful. What should have been a knee-slapping hour of television was instead a stodgy, unimaginative, dull slog. Not the greatest commercial for standup comedy. (It was not unlike watching Real Sex on HBO, a show that is ostensibly about sex, but which contains not one single erotic moment. Ever.) How have they accomplished this? Is it the comics’ fault? It can’t be. We have seen many of these comics be much funnier– on TV and live.

And things don’t look to be improving any– we saw the teaser for the next episode and the producers have brought back perhaps the most odious challenge from a previous season, the heckler challenge. Could there be a more degrading thing, for both the heckler and the heckled, than to engage in this display? Here’s what we wrote about it last season:

The point of the heckling exercise, says Clark, is to see “who can dish it out and who can take it.” Don’t the clubs have bouncers that pretty much make this point moot? At least the better clubs do. Why not just have the comics do a hell gig somewhere in Fresno or Victorville? At least spare the comics from the ignominy of having to heckle another comic. Through this exercise, the contestants run the risk of having the audience view them all as pathetic, desperate individuals, incapable of saying “no” to even the most shameful requests. (Actually, after seeing the heckling challenge, there is no risk. They have demonstrated it quite clearly.) Oh, it’s all in good fun, you say.

Good for Joey Gay for refusing to take the bait for staying silent when asked to heckle April Macie.

We aren’t sure we can watch next week. We might just take the week off. Five more weeks is suddenly starting to seem like forever.

We suppose that the whole reason the show got picked up in the first place was that it was pitched as a reality show. But the tiny bits of “reality” that they wedge in here and there are tedious. In keeping with the look and feel of a reality show, they insert behind-the-scenes stuff that doesn’t serve to heighten the tension or provide insight into the comics or give the viewer a good idea of what it’s like to be a comic. It all just sucks valuable time away from the funny stuff, the actual sets. So, it sucks as a reality show and it sucks as a comedy show. So, to answer Bellamy Bill’s impertinent question, Yes… we are ready for some crazy shit. And we have absolutely no faith that we’re going to get it from this show any time soon.

We noticed that the producers have seen fit to tell us just how long each comic has been doing standup. Just before each was introduced at the theater, a chyron appeared with number years of experience next to the comic’s name. This is reality. It’s interesting to us, and, we must assume, it’s of interest to civilian viewers.

We nearly busted a gut when Sean Rouse said, “Sympathy from a dead relative will get you far on a reality show.” And he said it during his set! A sly observation on the nature of reality shows and a good-natured (we assume) dig at (we assume) friend and fellow comic Ralphie May. Readers may recall that May wept during one of his challenge sets on season one.

Near the end of this episode, when he brought out the top five from this week (Gerry Dee, Jon Reep, Amy Schumer, Matt Kirshen and Capital One Audience Favorite Lavell Crawford), Bellamy Bill said, “Let’s hear it one more time for all our contestants this year and please come out to see them at a comedy club near you.”

That’s a positive thing. The show should be/could be a splendid force for driving people to live performances. And not just by the winner… or the top three… or the top ten. Or not even only for the folks who competed and made it into the top 32. But for comedians in general.

Maybe it will be.

P.S.: For those of your who haven’t hopped on the site for a day or two, there’s a SPOILER ALERT a little further down this page. SO, if you don’t want to know what happens, don’t read it.