Hey! Good for Fortune Feimster for sitting in the audience at the taping of last night’s episode of Last Comic Standing. All of Standup America gets a lesson on how to be a gracious loser (while getting valuable primetime network facetime)! Where were all the others? You can bet you’ll see our smiling faces in that crowd– we’re on the guest list for the Monday, July 26 taping at the Alex. It’ll be one of the highlights of our upcoming week in Los Angeles.

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Somebody give Craig Robinson handshaking lessons. Or block out the show so that no one gets near him. The Male Half notes that he never got within several yards of Robinson during his taping. Not sure why they’re letting people near him at this stage of the competition– especially since they don’t seem to have established any kind of protocol for contact. For the first few comics, it seemed as though the rule was, “Let Mr. Robinson touch you, but do not touch Mr. Robinson.” And it might have been Tommy Johnagin who got stiffed– the classic, cringe-inducing hand hanging out there in mid-air, waiting for the shake, but never receiving it… arrrgggh! It wasn’t until Mike DeStefano— who practically forced a shake through his use of body language, eye contact and, quite possibly, good ol’ fashioned intimidation– that Robinson actually consented to a shake. We began to wonder if Robinson hadn’t been CGI’ed into the taping, so unnatural was the interaction between host and comedian.

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Oh, that new set! Those giant 15-ft. high letters spelling out “C O M I C!” Could they be too bright? Laurie Kilmartin looked like a photograph, like she was 2-D, instead of 3-D. The contrast was non-existent. Subsequent comics looked only slightly better (Did the director adjust the lighting? Did our eyeballs adjust?) but they all looked flat or washed out. The lighting during the taping of the semifinals was gorgeous. Last night’s episode looked like a different show with a different feel, a different palate. We were thrown by the new look.

And the comedians seem somewhat off-kilter as well. Could they feel the heat from all those bulbs behind them? (Not unlike walking through downtown Vegas– you can feel the heat from all those tiny incandescent bulbs!) Perhaps the crowd threw their timing off. A significant portion of the audience in the Alex was made up of screamers and hooters. Sometimes enthusiasm among the crowd members can be a curse and not a blessing. Nearly all of Kilmartin’s punchlines setups were met with outright screams and WHOO-HOO’s! That kind of thing is potentially deadly to a comedian. She handled it like a pro. The audience wrangler might have cautioned against such behavior. It’s a fine line to walk, though– you run the risk of deadening the response if you try to engineer the response.

When the Male Half went out onto that same Alex Stage– in the number one slot– the Female Half was momentarily worried that the audience that evening was too hopped up. The warmup dude had been throwing candy and making audience members dance– typical audience warmup tactics, but perhaps too much for a comedy show. Perhaps the same warmup dude was working last night’s taping. (We must ask: When so many audience warmup dudes are actual, working standup comics with an explicit understanding of comedy crowd dynamics, why aren’t those people tapped for this assignment? They know what’s good for a comic… they also know what’s disastrous.

They remained volatile for the next few acts.

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Where were the judges? We know that in past seasons, the judges have disappeared by this stage of the contest. But this year, the format has been jiggered to be pure competition– no house, no jester outfits, no car washing– so it seemed odd that the judges were gone. (And we didn’t notice their absence until long after the show was over!) If you’re going to have a competition– a pure competition– all the way through the run, why not have the judges in there? Sure the ultimate judges are the folks at home, voting via txt or online, but might not the judges have been carried along through the rest of the season?

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One of the questions rippling through the social media (and the MSM) is “Where’s the house?” A lot of viewers are surprised that there’s no house, no contrived, reality-show laboratory as a backdrop for experimentation on the comedy rats. Did the show drop the ball as far as educating the public as to the format changes on this season’s show? Heck, even the Baltimore Sun’s reality TV blogger, Sarah Kelber, seemed mystified by the absence of the house. A reality show specialist, for a major daily is confused.

I haven’t always been a devoted Last Comic Standing watcher, but I’ve seen enough of it to be a little perplexed by the format we saw in last night’s live show.

Didn’t they used to live in a house and do challenges — and then perform live sets? I can’t quite recall how it used to work, but I was surprised that last night’s show felt like an open-mike night hosted by Craig Robinson. I guess they’re going the American Idol route … but no judges’ commentary? It was all a little odd.

What’s odd is that either Kelber didn’t get the memo… or there was no memo.

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The ratings dipped by 6 per cent from last week. A single-digit drop can be made up by Hulu. It’s holding steady… third behind reruns of Big Bang and Men (we would bet money that’s what the suits call it!) and The Bachelorette. But they beat out original episodes of The Good Guys.

Next week, according to Robinson: They eliminate three comedians. That’s 33 per cent! That leaves seven! This thing will be over quickly! August 9 is the date of the finale.