Episode 1!

Well… everyone thinks that all the comics who audition for Last Comic Standing have stood out in the rain for a week or so, wearing bear suits and camping in tiny tents.

Of course, to all who believe this, we ask one question:

Were any of the comedians who made it through to the evening showcase depicted standing in the rain, huddled in a tent or wearing a bear suit?

Put down your pencils.

The answer is, “No.”

So… what can we conclude?

Two things:

No one who stood out in the rain got into the evening showcase.

and

No one who got through to the evening showcase had to stand out in the rain.

This is, of course, in direct contradiction to the opinion now held by the vast majority of the 3 or 4 million people who watched this evening’s premiere. Most folks think that Laurie Kilmartin and Felipe Esparza and James Adomian and the rest of them went without showers and decent hot food in order to get their big break.

And you know some people who watched were fretting about Kilmartin’s little boy. (“Did she take the baby with her? Did she make that little boy stand out in the rain on Melrose for a day and a half??)

Relax, people: It’s Reality Television!

Such is the need of “reality televison”– they seem to create a lot of unreality (or near reality) in order to make reality reality more… exciting. Or gritty. Or dramatic.

We can’t say we blame them.

It makes for a better story. A gaggle of hopefuls, camping out in the inclement March weather of Southern California, getting in front of the judges and lights and cameras of a network television show.

And there is some truth there. Some of them, as we saw through the magic of videotape, get through and are critiqued by Andy Kindler and Natasha Leggero and Greg Giraldo. And it was a dream come true.

But the vast majority are cannon fodder.

And the vast majority of them know this.

And a tiny sliver of them harbor tiny, murmuring hopes of wowing the judges and splashing onto the evening stage and mowing down a packed house and getting that red envelope.

Of course, if any of them ever did get that red envelope, they’d shit a giant log once they heard their name introduced a few weeks later at the Alex Theatre in Glendale. And it would be a horrible embarrassment and the theater would smell badly and it would delay production for about ninety minutes while the union stage workers called in union hazardous material workers to clean up the mess.

But no one ever thinks that far beyond wowing Kindler.

So.  If you are planning out a reality television show such as Last Comic Standing, you make some… arrangements.

None of which compromise the integrity of the show.

And they make for a better experience… down the line.  (Have you ever been to a grade school recital where one of the performers drops the e Coli bomb?  Well, count yourself lucky.)

Full disclosure: We (the Male and Female Halves) auditioned for the show this season.  So, our analysis of this season will be (at least for a time) somewhat different than it’s been in past seasons.

Different how?

Just different.  That will have to suffice as an answer.

Tonight’s premiere moved like a shot.  It was well edited, it was crisp and clear as a bell (largely due to the fact that we’ve got digital cable and a 26-inch Sanyo television) and it told the story of the Los Angeles auditions concisely.

We saw a lot of the morning or daytime auditions.  And we saw a lot of Kindler, Leggero and Giraldo.  And we much prefer them as judges.  In seasons past, we’ve had talent coordinators from late night television shows, we’ve had former contestants and we’ve had various stars of NBC television dramas and comedies.

Let’s see… Ant or Andy Kindler?  A pompous and way-too-serious Richard Belzer or Greg Giraldo?  Natasha Legerro or French Stewart?

Just on paper, it’s no contest.

And when it played out on our screen, it was no contest– we would much rather see three comedians throwing their heads back and cackling and cracking themselves up and (in most cases) offering rather insightful analysis than the contrived “experts” that passed judgement in previous seasons.  (Of course, we read on another blog that the judges were the weak spot.  We’re constantly amazed by the variety of opinions out there!)

The judges are featured heavily.  They seem to be (at least in this phase of the competition) the focal point of the show, the glue that holds it all together.  Fortunately, they’re up to the task.  (We’ve seen speculation elsewhere that the show doesn’t even need a host!  That Craig Robinson was superfluous!  We are not convinced of this, but it’s interesting that someone would conclude this.)  But the judges are a highlight.  And, really, why shouldn’t they be?

In seasons past, the judges were slothlike.  They employed forced catchphrases (in an obvious attempt to drum up some sort of Simon Cowell-like following) and they often demonstrated a woeful lack of knowledge of standup.  Or, if they were actual comics, they showed a curious lack of empathy with the performers.  No chance of this happening in 2010.

And there’s been very little propensity toward embarrassment.  Active embarrassment.  In other words, no one is going out of the way to make any hopeful feel bad.  This is in strict violation of the rules and bylaws set forth by FremantleMedia in the first thousand episodes of American Idol!  Will it succeed as reality television?  Will it blaze a new kinder and gentler trail?  Can a reality show survive without humiliating at least some of its participants?

We shall see!

But if you deprive the viewer of red faces and tears, you had better provide other things.  Like variety!

The show offered a wide array of comedians employing a variety of styles and techniques.

We read a review on another website that went gaga over two comedians– two comedians that didn’t make us crack a smile!  So, if we take that as an indication, there seems to be something for everyone.

Was the show funny?  Good question.

It was certainly spirited.  The judges seemed to be having a good time.  (No small feat, considering the grueling day they endured and the number of comedians they judged.)   But are we really expecting funny at this point in the proceedings?

This episode (and the next two) are laying the ground work.  As viewers of reality television for the past decade or so, we are trained to expect some foundation building, some preface.  It was funny enough.  And we say that without any disappointment or condescension.

The real comedy fireworks will come starting in episode 4 (June 28, by our estimation), when the actual competition begins and the comics will be depicted doing longer sets in a theater setting, before a live audience.

Odd Observations

“Skippy Greene” was actually comedian Flip Schultz.

We spotted Darren Carter, Rob Little, Geechy Guy, Vince Morris, Felicia Michaels among the contestants.

Among those who were featured– but who didn’t make it through to the semifinals (who didn’t receive the coveted Red Envelope)– Chris Fairbanks, Jimmy Dore and Cathy Ladman made the most of a primetime network appearance.

Tom Clark— who was featured in almost all of the promo for the series thus far– didn’t make it to the nighttime showcase. Curious! His face (if not his name) is now familiar to millions of Americans who watch NBC.

Which brings up another question (which we’ve asked in previous years): Why aren’t the psychos and the Vikings and the clowns and the nutters and the amateurs rewarded for hanging it out over the edge by having their name superimposed (if only for two or three beats) over their images? It seems kinda arbitrary who gets the name/hometown and who doesn’t.

Monitor those Tweets! You’ll get a wide range of opinions about LCS! One will call the show “shockingly unfunny” the next will say it’s LOL-worthy. We seem to recall somewhere that humor is subjective. I wonder if that’s still true?

Where does this notion come from that only amateurs should be allowed to compete on Last Comic Standing? We’ve addressed this in the past. But the idiot notion persists. So, it’s only right that we obliterate it again.

People, listen up: If we were to restrict the show to amateurs only, the show would be an unfunny, hot mess. The studio floor would be slick with feces. The contestants would run out of TV-clean material halfway through the evening showcase and the ratings would hover somewhere down around that of the Haddon Township School District School Lunch Menu Bulletin on Comcast Cable Channel #19.

Where do such inane memes get started? And what kind of dribbling know-nothings perpetuate such moronic notions? It’s not too hard to figure out that such a show must necessarily be stocked with competent, experienced comedians who have at least a modest stockpile of jokes and who have developed some formidable stagecraft. If you think such people are lighting cigars with $50 bills (and thus have no need for a primetime television credit), then you are so ignorant as to be in danger of having your television viewing rights taken away.

No one, it seems, can talk about LCS without mentioning that the show is “fixed.” They cite as proof the incident where– six years ago– Brett Butler and Drew Carey walked off the set because their input was seemingly disregarded when the final decision was made to jettison Dan Naturman from the competition. Apparently the smell of a rat persists in the nostrils of many. At the time we were mystified that the producers chose to show the seamy underbelly of the reality show and expose the “casting” element of the show. It certainly cast Naturman as a victim, and it definitely made for some “reality” drama, but the meme persists to this day that the show is somehow crooked. And, while Naturman’s name is rarely mentioned any more among the conspiracy theorists, the “fixed” meme is regularly trotted out (on chat rooms and in Tweets) to discredit choices made on the show this season.

There seems to be a level of sophistication among reality television viewers when it comes to all the other series. We’re curious as to why this same level of maturity hasn’t reached fans of LCS.

To all those who insist that the show is “fixed,” we say: Grow up.