Recap: Last Comic Standing (Season Premiere)

By Jen Smith
Fancast.com

Ah, summer programming. How I love to hate thee. OK, that’s not entirely fair. There are a few select summer shows that I do enjoy quite a bit. One of those shows is Last Comic Standing. Bill Bellamy is back for hosting duties [watch this video of his guide to talent], and we meet some new British chick named Fearne Cotton, whom I presume is NBC’s Cat Deeley knock-off. As per usual, the season starts with the audition round and this week it’s in New York City and Tempe. Why Tempe? I don’t know either. We will also see some guest judges in each city from our favorite past and present NBC shows! That makes me happy. Tonight in NYC we get Richard Belzer and Steve Shirripa, who are extremely critical but only in the best of ways.

NYC has its fair share of crazies [check out some of the talent in these clips]. Thankfully, NBC only briefly showed the unfunny people (long story short: man dressed as a chicken, two separate people make jokes about killing and/or injuring babies, and a Keith Richards dummy doll). We meet the first funny man of the night: Louis Ramey. I love him already. He made jokes about being a black man in Aspen, surrounded by snow and white people. Brilliant. He almost makes me forget I’m racist (kidding! Sheesh, calm down). We see more funnies from the likes of Adam Sank, Esther Ku, and two twins named Stone and Stone. Christian acoustic folk duo God’s Pottery taught me the concept of abstinence (which I’m grateful for because back home in West Virginia abstinence was only a theory). They were pretty funny but I worry about staying power. Nonetheless, they all moved to the showdown.

In the showdown we get to see a little bit more of their act and we also get to see the audience reaction. The judges and producers decided to put five comics from NYC through to the Vegas rounds: Louis Ramey (yay!), Stone and Stone (who did the exact same shtick in both rounds so I didn’t laugh the second time), Esther Ku (Korean-American, so plenty of material to work with), God’s Pottery (I love rainbows, too), and Dan Naturman (who either we didn’t see much of or I simply don’t remember him… not a good sign).

Moving on to Tempe, Arizona we join Fred Willard and Kathy Najimy who are great comedians in their own right. Of course the weirdos show up again but I won’t dignify that with a description of them because I watch for the funny people. Speaking of funny, Tempe’s first of the day is Marcus. No last name. Just Marcus. He’s got a lot of tattoos and he bonds with Fearne after they rub their tattoos together. Marcus is apparently an impressionist and quite a good one at that. We hear every character of Family Guy before they stop him and put him through to the showdown. Next on the funny list is Adam Hunter, a cynic with a heart of gold. Both guys kill it in the showdown and move on to Vegas along with a guy named Phil Palace.

Biggest letdown: Rob Little (a let down because he didn’t make it to Vegas!)

Biggest comic potential: Marcus (I sense more than just an impressionist in there)

I’d like to see more of: Adam (we cynics should stick together)

Funniest comic of the night: Louis Ramey (but to be fair, he got the most screen time)