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Reep wins LAST COMIC STANDING (ANALYSIS)
It’s official. Jon Reep is the winner of this season’s Last Comic Standing. (The Male Half picked Reep to take it all from the very beginning.) We congratulate Mr. Reep and we also congratulate Mr. Crawford and all the folks who appeared on the show this season.
The two-hour finale was… two hours!
Bellamy Bill looked like a wishbone wrapped in aluminum foil. The two-hour extravaganza managed to pack about 20 minutes of actual watchable television into a 120-minute slot. It’s television magic! Bellamy Bill’s hosting was particularly mediocre tonight, making us even more depressed that he’s returning to host in ’08. The man has no sense of drama or pacing. He’s all one-note. He starts out with adrenalin squirting from his ears and, by the end, he’s still screaming, only by this time, we don’t care any more. This is the exact opposite of what a host should do.
We thought that LCS was capable of making only comics look bad. Tonight, they managed to make the USC Marching Band look bad. The USA Marching Band! How did they manage that?! They sounded like holy hell as they marched into the theater!
Carrot Top crushed! The copper-haired prop comic has been hustling lately– on the Jerry Lewis Labor Day Telethon, Mind Freak, the Flavor Flav Roast on Comedy Central– perhaps it’s necessary to pack the Luxor. Whatever the reason, he crushes in each appearance and tonight was certainly no exception. He deserves credit, considering all the snarky things that are said about him in greenrooms (and even on talkshows!)– he comes out, time after time, with new material, and slays.
Robert Schimmel came out and did perhaps the darkest set in the show’s history, and, quite possibly, in the history of primetime.
Sprinkled throughout the broadcast were The Top Ten Biggest Laughs on LCS– counting down by showing ten separate bits from ten different comics. Who hell chose these bits? We’ve seen these comics do much funnier bits than the ones they trotted out tonight. We’ve seen them do them on this very show! It’s not like there was some sort of licensing problem! It is truly mystifying.
One particularly agonizing segment was the One-Liners thing they did– lining up the Bottom Eight and setting the clock at 2:00, then having each comic in turn do a one-liner. Nothing makes a comic look better, huh?! It was excruciating and pointless but, at least it made the comics look incompetent! (And that, after all, seems to be the point of the show this evening.)
To quote Ant, “Somebody has to tell the truth.” One lackluster segment had the three Celebrity Talent Scouts from this season lined up onstage on stools, being “interviewed” by Bellamy Bill, interspliced with a few video clip strolls down memory lane. The loving tribute to Ant merely re-affirmed the truth– He might be the luckiest person in show business.
Dane Cook swaggered onto the stage (after we were shown a short clip from “Good Luck Chuck”) and said some nice things about the two finalists. But… he didn’t do any standup! He’s a movie star now! This had to be delicious for him. All the abuse he’s taken from the standup community fades to a faint memory as the man is invited to appear on LCS, just before the exciting climax– representing the current pinnacle of standup success; representing standup itself!– and all he has to do is say some nice things about the two comic who “have a bright future ahead of them!” And then… Exit! Stage right!
The roast was hacked into two segments– one devoted to roasting Crawford, one to roasting Reep. It was taped September 11, so they had seven days to hack it into bits and slap it all back together again into it’s final, sorry form. The comics were all funny, but the editing ripped the balls off of the affair and sucked a lot of the interest out of it. Next time, more roast, fewer puppets!
Now… what is the deal with the fucking puppets?!? It’s the biggest night of your life… now you have to talk to foul-mouthed puppets backstage. What is with TV producers that they feel the need to wedge puppets into every other project? It’s like a sickness. Every every other project you say? Damn near. The reason you don’t see them in everything from the nightly news to the farm report is that, eventually folks come to their senses and lose the puppets. But they try. Heck, the first season of Saturday Night Live had puppets! It’s never funny and it just brings the proceedings to a screeching halt. Enough already with the puppets!
It is hoped that, lame as this season was, it inspires the folks at home to go to a comedy club (or a casino, or a theater) and see comedy the way it should be seen– Live the way it is meant to be seen. Nothing else compares to it. Sit in the front row. Go often. See your favorites, see someone you’ve never heard of before. Just go and see it.
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Reply to: Reep wins LAST COMIC STANDING (ANALYSIS)
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Congratulations to Jon Reep! Jon is not just the pride of Hickory, NC – he’s the pride of Raleigh, NC and NCSU, as well. We’re all very proud of him.I first met Jon at Charlie Goodnights Comedy Club in the late 90’s. Jon’s act back then consisted mainly of HIGH-energy dance routines performed to ear-shattering music. He absolutely owned the club back then and quickly built a reputation for himself. He hit the college market and was an immediate hit with his lovable persona and frenetic comedy style. His act is authentic. What you see is what you get. Jon made the move to Los Angeles in 2000 and seemingly overnight landed the role as the “Hemi Guy” in a memorable Dodge campaign. A recurring role on the ABC sitcom “Rodney” followed, all capped off by his win on Last Comic Standing. Ten years is no overnight success. Yet Jon’s career trajectory has been nothing short of straight up. I can’t wait to see what happens next. Congratulations, Jon. You deserve it!
Congrats to John and Lavell. Dane Cook was right when he said it’s not about tonight’s winner, it’s about a long career. They both have them in their future.I agree about the puppets! Who the hell were they and why? But, SNL didn’t just have puppets – they had Jim Henson, who I think we can agree went on to do some amazing things with faux fur.Ant showed to be an Ant-hole, and loved being one. I wanted to see more of ‘the road’ from the other two judges. I thought Carrot top did well, as did my three daughters, which is much more important.Call me when Bill Bellamy is not hosting. I’ll watch then. When Lavell ripped him for not being able to read, I started noticing more and more that it’s true. Is Bellamy even a comic? God, I hope not.This show has gone downhill. Not in the comics, who were hard-working and funny, but in the production.Where have you gone, Jay Mohr?
Good analysis.The puppet segments were lame and so were the “John Madden” segments.And I agree that, even though Carrot Top gets a lot of flack for being a prop comedian as opposed to a “real” comedian, his set had more creativity and originality than a lot of the others.I was also glad to see Robet Schimmel, since all the other comedians we saw were from what I would call the “warm and fuzzy” school of comedy.I really thought Lavell was going to win. He seemed to have more support from the studio audience. But I predicted last week that the producers might be setting us up for an “upset” on the finale. Maybe that’s why Lavell went on after Jon every round except the last one.Oh yeah, and how much did Dane Cook have to pay the producers to waltz in at the end of the show and basically do a commercial for his new movie and NOT do any standup? Or perhaps they’re managing him, too? Nice dye job, though.
Nobody paid anyone anything to have Dane Cook waltz in at the end of last night’s show. Cook is managed by LCS producer Barry Katz. So, Katz used the show to promote his client’s new movie. It’s old school synergy!
The problem you describe is not a new one. There’s a long history of comics being clean on the tube and being otherwise in their live performances.So it is not limited to LCS. The same could be said of a comic who appears on Tonight or Late Show. Or comics who appeared on Ed Sullivan or on the Dumont Network! He’s required to adhere to certain rules and he can only hint at the nature of his club set.Bit it’s long been known that the two are different venues with different rules. As for luring people in by emphasizing a comedian’s recent appearance on network television, along with that might go the responsibility of informing the ticket buyers that what they’re about to see is R-rated, PG-rated, PG-13 or X-rated. We have no problem with that whatsoever. Booking a comic with TV exposure will draw the public in. A lot of them. It is to be expected that a good number of them will be horrified by the discrepancy between what they saw on NBC or CBS or ABC and what they saw live. (Even moreso if there is a discrepancy on the scale of Bob Saget Full House vs. Bob Saget comedian.) This might not be so much a blind spot on the part of the viewer/clubgoer as it is a failure on the part of the venue to always stress that they present live, uncensored comedy.We might be too inside as far as this matter is concerned– we’ve always understood that there is a vast difference between what a performer does on network TV and what he might do live– In fact, we go out of our way to see an act live <>because<> we know he’ll be unfettered. We don’t assume, however, that everyone out there is similarly knowledgeable. Does this make them naive? Perhaps. But if you’re going to squirm about comment cards, then a simple solution would be to subtly warn everybody that what is done in the clubs is not what is seen on the telly.None of this applies strictly to the Boise Bone, of course. It applies to all clubs. We have heard nothing but great things about the Boise crowds– they’re intelligent, discriminating, etc. (And we are looking forward to performing for them in March 5-9! And, since we haven’t been on TV in 15 years, network or otherwise, there are no expectations!)And none of this is reason to not book someone because he’s filthy… or book someone because he’s clean.Not-so-nice comment cards are a fact of life. We would hope that the club does not act on those cards and banish Rouse from the club.
I kinda had a feeling Reep had it because his material reached a broader audience. But aside from Ant and Bill’s suit and those friggin’ puppets…WHAT THE HELL IS UP WITH THE USC BAND STILL PLAYING TUSK???!!!! Good God! I’m 43 and we played that in high school! I guess if Fleetwood Mac gives you a hit you have to ride it until the wheels fall off.I also checked the NBC site and the tour isn’t coming to Atlanta. SC, NC and MS yes. Crap.
People (as in my parents) ask me if I would ever do Last Comic Standing. Like there just a list you get on and there you go. And of course I would do the show. I wait tables for God’s sake, what am I going to be, picky? And before I go any further I’d like to say congratulations to my friend Amy Schumer who had a great run on last comic standing and is now primed to have a huge career. (She was really great on the show.) And to Doug Benson who is hilarious and now because of the show more people know who he is. But Last Comic Standing is a fucking insult to stand up comedy. This season they encouraged heckling with a heckle challenge. Some idiot is going to watch that episode and go to the club and think he’s helping the comic out by yelling shit during his set. HAHAHAHA what fun, look at me, I work at the factory all week, no one hears a word I say and now I’ll yell shit out, yeahhh, just like high school, ahhhhh. Hey after we go yell shit out at the comedy club let’s go over to the Nascar track and pour oil all over it so the drivers will crash. Hey, we’re just helping the race out. Then they had the remaining comics dress up as court jesters and go do comedy at a fucking Medieval Nights bullshit. Yeah, because that’s what stand up’s are, just court jesters dying to make the king laugh.Then they had to go around and tell people jokes one on one. Which is the total opposite of stand up comedy. Go up to a stand up, give them $20, and ask them to tell you their funniest joke, one on one, on the street, in the bar , wherever, and i guarantee you, you won’t fucking laugh!!! These aren’t knock knock jokes we’re telling. (Amy won this challenge with a great line about Nicole Ritchie being Paris Hilton’s dog. Great line. But it’s not her stand up.)Here are some of the challenges we have to look forward to next year:See if comics can handle the heat, they’ll be performing while getting burned alive.See if a comic can handle a heckle while getting raped by a sword.See if a comic can perform when they’re sad- they’ll have to do their best five minutes while watching their parents being killed.Then they have one liner challenges. Because all comics are all doing one liners. They make the comics wait for the results, their hearts pounding through their chests, and then perform right after. Are you insane? I’d love to see track and field competitions run like LCS. Runners hopping on one leg, running backward, you’re fast, now let’s see if you can crawl. And the proof that Last Comics Standing is maybe the worst thing since Pirate Master, on the finale, the biggest night in stand up comedy, Carrot Top has the best set of the night. Carrot Top.
207 was the first time that LCS was available for me to watch here in Australia. Oddly it was aired on two channels on the same night on cable tv here? First on the Comedy Chanel and when that finished on the Fox 8 network. One advantage we get here is very few commercials during the show on cable so the adds don’t detract from the program as much. I must admit I watched the show purely for the comedians performances and tuned out all the “made for TV” audience spectacles. The Heckling is a classic ‘stereotype’ of comedy image and to be honest if I was in it how I would react is an interesting question. Seeing as I do not use hecklers to make the show I am doing better and given that 1 in 5,000,000 hecklers can be a useful prop for a show may give away what my Live performance reaction to being heckled is and then the TV expectation for the show adds another perspective to the heckle comp. as it was used. Reep was a worthy winner and overall the standard of the comics was good.
My favorite part of the Last Comic Standing finale was that when Bill Bellamy did his “bit” about Senator Larry Craig, he didn’t know the Senator’s name. He just said something like, “Did you hear about the Senator?” You could tell that his “material” was based on hearing other comics talking about it, not on his ever having watched the news or read a newspaper. What a pro.BF
I finally got the chance to watch it on the DVR just now. I loved reading your commentary afterwards. I too would like to defend Carrot Top. He was one of my favorites as a kid when I watched “Comic Strip Live” Saturday nights on FOX. After starting comedy, I sort of lost respect for him, but only because of what other older comics had to say about him. On my last trip to Vegas, the girl I was with wanted to see him and paid for the tickets so I “had” to go. He was hysterical! And a down right nice guy. He has great energy and a great look, and just wonderfully inventive props. He’s not trying to get a sitcom. He’s not trying to be a movie star. He just goes on stage and is sheer entertainment. And to top it all off, only one of the props he had on LCS was one I already saw in Vegas 6 months ago. Most comics who just use a pen and paper don’t come up with that much new material that fast. I would pay to see him again.