Last Comic Standing Final Performance

Last Week on Last Comic Standing
1. Adam Hunter
2. Iliza Shlesinger
3. Louis Ramey
4. Jeff Dye
5. Ron G
6. Jim Tavare
7. Sean Cullen
Marcus (immunity)

In the Beginning

The show opens with a silly Last Comic Standing song by three men to get the crowd going. Towards the end of the song, all 8 performers from the last episode come out say who they are and why they will be the last comic standing.

After the silly song is complete, Billy Bellamy comes out and tells the crowd that all eight comedians will be performing tonight although only 5 have gotten the votes to actually be in the final (Marcus was automatically in, bringing the total to 6).

This is stupidity personified. One of the two comedians going home could come out with an amazing set and tear the place down, but since they really shouldn’t have been there to begin with, they won’t even be eligible.

The producers of this show are really starting to stretch my patience as the idea of the last show being voted on was stupid and this new wrinkle is ridiculous. If I hadn’t been watching from the beginning, I probably would have stopped now. They have constantly filled the space they were given of 1 ½ hours in the beginning and 2 hours in the semi-finals with crap and kept the actual performances to a minimum.

Marcus

So, after the break, they are quickly back with a short piece on Marcus. It goes through his growing up in Salt Lake City, UT and working for free at a radio station before getting talked into performing at a local comedy club where he started.

Marcus won the playboy bunny nursery rhyme to gain a free pass to the finals last week with a pretty funny coming attractions think that he did with voices, but that seemed a bit over the top as a prize when the news came out that they would all be performing to get in except for him. Either way, he is there and therefore can finish no worse than 6th.

He has proven so far to be really funny in short bursts, but hasn’t had to perform a set yet on the show. He would still have to be the odds on favorite to win, but can he put together the performance he needs to win.

Marcus’s performance is pretty good, but as I had doubts about, he was not nearly as good in a set as he is one a one or two joke basis. His part about not understanding music today was pretty funny and he seemed determined not to bust out the big impressions, which is odd. This may have been him trying to show he is funny without them, but I don’t know if it will pay off for him.

Ron G

Next up is Ron G of Columbus South Carolina. We quickly get into his video showing where he grew up in a very rural home and how he came from there to become a comedian.

Ron G has to be the biggest underdog at this point and for good reason. Out of the 12 that made it to the house in L.A. he ranked near the bottom, probably around 10 or 9, so he lucked out by not getting called in to perform in either of the two eliminations.

He has had a funny joke or two so far, but nothing at all to show that he has any shot of winning this. However, he has been cocky throughout, but timid when having to perform in the smaller challenges. His performance last week was probably just enough to get him through to the final 6, but if the caller’s backed one of the lesser performers that night, he may be performing dead in the water.

His first joke was funny, but went on far too long with a bit of a gap as if he got a little lost. After another couple of not so good jokes (one that seemed a bit of a rip from Bernie Mac), he completely flopped on the delivery of the next.

It didn’t get much better as his injury attorney joke flopped leading him to telling the crowd they were terrible before giving one of his nervous giggles. He then went on to follow up on it with a Mexican stereotype testimonial joke. This was actually a little funny, but made me think of the hick that didn’t make the semis and I thought would be physically assaulted when he made the Japanese fighter pilot reenactment joke.

His final joke had some possibility, but he then used it to bring together his act which completely didn’t work as the characters weren’t interesting enough the first time to warrant a second helping.

Surprisingly, the crowd seemed to give him a strong applause, but I don’t know if it is because of his somewhat charming personality or because they were drunk. Either way, it was not a strong showing for Ron G that should have him near the bottom, if he made it at all.

Now for another twist on the show. I expected all 8 performers to come out and do their acts, then have the unveiling of the two who missed out before having a round up reminder at the end. However, Bellamy about to state whether or not Ron G even made it to finals (where he just performed, again this is idiotic).

So, last week, the people voted… and… Ron G was eliminated from the competition. Wow… Wow, this was worth it for the look on his face. If you couldn’t tell, his undeserved bravado in the last few episodes of the show really rubbed me the wrong way, especially since he never showed he was very funny to begin with. Wow, I have that face on pause on my TV right now and I wish I had a way to do a screen cap of it. This is priceless.

Despite how much I enjoyed this reveal, it still think that it is a terrible ploy by the producers and hope they don’t pull this crap next year. Appropriately so, the fans boo to the new news and applaud him off the stage.

Next, he is given a quick on stage interview, which he handles pretty well. He thanks the appropriate people while trying to hold his emotions together. However, you can tell how much he was shocked and hurt by the revelation.

Jim Tavare

Jim Tavare is the next comic up and due to his placement in the lineup, I can’t imagine he would not have made the final 6. I thought that he had one of the bottom two performances last week, so I’m assuming that he was probably the one to get saved by the fans. I would have to imagine that the producers have the other eliminated finalist performing 7th or 8th to build up excitement.

So, on to his video about living on a boat on the River Thames in London. He has a wife and two kids and wanted to be a professional bassist before going into comedy.

He comes out in his tux, which doesn’t bode well for him in my opinion. So far, he has been his funniest with casual jokes. However, his first joke is a good one referring to himself as The Hills Have Eyes: The Musical. I always thought he looked familiar to the guy in that film. However, the follow-up fell flat.

The next couple of musical jokes didn’t land well either. However, the joke about “I Can’t Believe it’s not Crack Cocaine” was pretty good. The next joke tanked and he seems to be loosing his composure a bit. The one joke to the next stuff isn’t the best for a short period of time like this with nothing to tie them together.

He seems to be pulling it back together a little, but his comedy is so dry that it has to be amazing and his is just not. Now he mixes a little something dirty, “I had the distinction of entering the young musician of the year, and she was none to pleased about it.” That’s a goodie, but similar to other things he had already done.

Johann Strauss in puberty just fell flat, all pun intended. Next he starts talking about Jimmy Hendrix and goes on to do a tribute, which is actually “The Star Spangled Banner.” He just does some hand movements to “Jimmy-fie” it. That was just a waste of time. Wow, the last joke took forever and in no way was funny.

In my opinion, he just barely squeaked out above Ron G for second worst so far with Marcus’s performance leaps and bounds above their own. However, we now get the reveal as to whether or not he was really even here to begin with. And of course he was. However, he should end up near the bottom tonight.

Bill Bellamy?

Now, since the show still has way too much time than it knows what to do with, they have Bill Bellamy performing. Of course since this is the best gig he can get now and had to agree to host in order to perform, I can’t complain too much.

Now to critique Mr. MTV. He definitely has confidence and a good delivery, but his material was average at best. There were not really good jokes and even Jim Tavare had a couple of zingers that beat out anything Bill brought to the table. That sounded like something he had to throw together in five minutes before the show.

Now for an in show commercial. This is for the new show America’s Toughest Jobs brought to you by the guy who does Dangerous Catch and Ice Road Truckers on Discovery channel, this show will have 13 contestants competing at a new job each week including crabbing, logging, monster truck racing, wrestling bulls, and truck driving. I wanted to hate it, but it actually looks a bit compelling. I may have to give it a go.

Wait, I thought that it was the top 5 plus Marcus, but apparently it is the top 5 with Marcus already included. This changes everything as apparently 3 were voted out last week. This makes it even more surprising that Jim Tavare made it in and leaves 3 more people to advance and 2 more to go home before the final vote. The plot thickens.

Louis Ramey

His video shows him in New York City where his has been a comic for over 20 years. Apparently he always wanted to be a comic and currently scrambles between multiple performances a night.

Decent opening joke about Amish and cheese. His follow up with Amish gangs wasn’t bad either.

He then spent the rest of his act on his Homa, LA joke. It started ok and then got a little long in the middle with thunderous applause for non-funny buildup statements. However, the second half of the joke was great. The “red-necks” taking on a foreign naval army second was great. This is the best single joke so far of the night.

However, I didn’t expect his act to already be over. He had a great joke there at the end.
I had a difficult time deciding where he should be so far in my list knowing it would be just above or below Marcus. Marcus had more funny jokes, but none that were really funny and not a great amount more. Therefore, Louis has beaten out Marcus so far in my opinion for the top spot tonight. I thought that it would be tough for him to do, but he has good material and a calm confidence that has shown throughout.

Next is the reveal that he did make the final round, which I though he should have done as the third funniest last week. Man, we are now down to four performers, two of which didn’t really make it and two that did.

Adam Hunter

Adam Hunter should have made the final round as he had the funniest performance last week, but we will see in a few minutes if this will be the case. It would be odd if they had three finalists in a row, leaving only one of the remaining three as true final round members.

Adam is from New York where he was a four time state champion wrestler. He currently coaches a wrestling team between gigs.

The first three rabid fire jokes about the Olympic flame, his drug birth, and his kidnapping all fall flat. The next three about 50 Cent sneakers and the George Bush speak and spell are equally average but play well in Vegas.

Now on to the political jokes, which are more commentary than joke and gone through so quickly that they don’t have time to land if they were good. Now onto more bad jokes about cell phone car accidents and drug use. After a few more jokes, he finally breaks out his first good one of the night. “My girlfriend always tells me I’m too rough in bed… Well, bring backup.”

Then he throws another four or five jokes out that aren’t very good. Now he steals an old joke and follows it up with a bad one. After a handful of bad jokes, he ends up with a decent one about 40 year old women being like drill sergeants in the sack.

Overall, this is going to have to be the most disappointing of the night. After coming out with a really strong set last week, he seemed to bring the back up jokes tonight. He must have spit out 30 jokes over this short period and only two or three were decent.

However, even with just a couple of quality jokes, he still ends up better than Jim Tavare and Ron G.

WOAH, back up, hit rewind, America is officially retarded. There it is, I’ve said it. They have just voted out the best performer from last week. I was sitting here thinking it logical that the person in this slot would be eliminated, but had already turned my attention to the death match for the final slot out of the last three contestants. This really throws me for a loop. At this point, I have to say that Last Comic Standing is officially a likeability contest, not a comedy contest and I will remember it as such from here on out.

Adam’s face went back and forth from hopeful to nervous and when she said he didn’t make it, there was mass confusion on his face, and for good reason. The audience gave huge boos to his exodus and I think it is one more poke at the dead animal that was Last Comic Standing this season.

Jeff Dye

Next up is Jeff Dye from Seattle, WA. He was goofy his whole life (I can believe it.) and after graduating college decided to do what he always wanted to do, standup comedy. They showed him performing at Comedy Underground, which oddly enough I had been to before to see someone who ended up being terrible.

The first joke was decent, but then wasted time introducing his parents. This idea ends up paying off, though, as he spends the next handful of jokes joking on them which really paid off. With them being in the crowd, they were better than they normally would have been.

His joke about Guess Who was decent. It had a really strong premise, but it went on way too long and lost track a few times.

He took the same chance that that Louis Ramey did by doing a little string of jokes before hitting a large topic joke. Unfortunately for him it didn’t come off the best in the world. It was still funny, though, and the stuff about his parents was good, it was a strong move on his part.

At this point, they are about to tell him whether or not he made it and it is almost impossible that he did not. I’m going 99.0% that he made the final round. Then it will be between Sean Cullen and Iliza Shlesinger as the last two which I would have to image she will be the won going to the finals from.

OK, before moving forward, I have to point out that Bill Bellamy gave a, ”Settle down ladies,” to the crowd, which I thought he was just joking about. Then they panned to these three super sexy girls two of which were staring at Jeff and the other one seemed to be dreamily hypnotized by him. Wow, he must have superpowers or something because I don’t see it.

Bellamy declares that he did in fact make the final round. He gets a hug from the co-host and looks like he is about to lay one on her as they talk.

Sean Cullen

Sean Cullen is from Toronto where he goes through a fantasy montage of everyone there knowing and loving him. They then show him with his wife and baby.

He starts off with some pretty bad jokes that seem to be getting worse. The good thing for him is that he isn’t singing. The bad thing is that he does an even more absurdist Will Farrell style of comedy and is not even Will Farrell.

Now he has resorted to a bad Sean Connery impersonation where he starts adding his own bad lines. Then, his no Australian bond villain joke starts out promising only to decline as oddly enough so does the accent.

His jokes continue to fail and then he just has to add something about a farm into the Neil Young James Bond lyrics he comes up with. For more on this, see the previous episode. He then moves on to R.E.M lyrics which don’t play well for me either. Then, before the Bob Dylan lyrics, he has a slight pause and waiver to his voice where I believe that he just realized that his set is almost up and he’s about to be booted from the show from last week. There is no way that he can think that he was better than her last week or that the fans thought he was, so he has to know what’s about to happen.

It ended up that the Dylan lyrics were the last of his performance, so after the break we will find out if he made it or not, but we already really know that he did not for many reasons, some of which that he was not funnier, nor more popular than Iliza and with the way they laid out the show, there is no way the send out a comedian last who knows that they did not really even make it there.

As they continue to mangle their own show, the producers of Last Comic Standing have decided that even though everyone else was told whether or not they made it immediately after they performed, the final two would have two wait until they both performed. This is smart for TV after putting themselves in such an idiotic position. Why not take out the opening act and or the bad Bill Bellamy act and move the reveal of who really made it to the beginning or since you have so much time to fill the end, just before showing who the fans can actually vote for, this is ridiculous, I almost want to stop watching.

Iliza Shlesinger

Iliza, from suburban Texas was pretty average in most things and therefore eventually decided to become a comedian. Her father was a jokester and loved when his daughter decided to go into comedy.

She starts off by firing up the crowd then immediately goes from The Olympics to drinking games. Not bad jokes, but she seems a bit tired.

Another decent jokes, led to a bad faxing joke that silenced the audience for a second until they realized what she was going for.

She came back quickly though with good office jokes. The ones about the “pulling guard” manager, negative space, and wind chimes definitely worked.

So, she is done and this is going to be a tough one. There are only three comics that deserve to really be in the running at this point: Marcus, Louis Ramey, and Eliza. My decision is going to be difficult between the three. They were all funny with a couple of really funny jokes and a mostly funny act. Nobody really tore the house down tonight, but these three were head and shoulders above the rest with Jeff Dye and Adam Hunter decent around the middle and Jim Tavare, Ron S, and Sean Cullen rounding out the bottom.

So, now we find out that Sean was eliminated and Iliza made it through, theoretically. Well after an overly wordy build up and what was supposed to be a tension building pause of about 30 seconds before saying the actual name of the person to advance in order to get “emotional face” from the two, Iliza did make it through.

Now for a montage of the final 5 from tonight. It makes my decision on the rankings a little bit easier. So, now to remind people not to be stupid and call the correct numbers and a reminder that the final show will be next week.

My Rankings of the 8 Performers:

This is how I feel the comedians were tonight, this is not taking in if they should have been performing or how they were in the other rounds.

1. Iliza Shlesinger
2. Louis Ramey
3. Marcus
4. Jeff Dye
5. Adam Hunter (didn’t make the final round)
6. Jim Tavare
7. Ron G (didn’t make final round)
8. Sean Cullen (didn’t make the final round)

My Rankings of the 5 True Finalists:

This is how I though the five actually final round comedians stacked up.

1. Iliza Shlesinger
2. Louis Ramey
3. Marcus
4. Jeff Dye
5. Jim Tavare

My Rankings of the 12 Finalists Overall

Factoring in everything on the show, all the performances, challenges, and just them being funny together, this is what I thought of them.

1. Iliza Shlesinger
2. Marcus
3. Louis Ramey
4. Adam Hunter
5. Jeff Dye
6. Jim Tavare
7. God’s Pottery
8. Sean Cullen
9. Ron G
10. Paul Foot
11. Papa CJ
12. Esther Ku

Approximate Finish and Predicted Finish

This is how I believe they finished. Most went out with at least one other comedian, so I made some judgment calls and the final 5 are predictions.

1. Iliza Shlesinger
2. Marcus
3. Louis Ramey
4. Jeff Dye
5. Jim Tavare
6. Adam Hunter
7. Sean Cullen
8. Ron G
9. Paul Foot
10. Papa CJ
11. Gods Pottery
12. Esther Ku

Final Thoughts

My overall impressions from this show were that they keep stretching it and making odd choices in order to do so. Bill Bellamy would have finished 5th out of the 9 performers in my opinion if he had been in the competition tonight. It was overall a poor night of comedy from what I had expected. It was Marcus’s show to loose, he seems to be overall the best comedian there, but he didn’t have a great night the only time he needed to which opened up the door for the two other good performers.