Last Comic Standing: The Voting Portion

I wish there wasn't voting. I believe in a comedy dictatorship.

-Andy Kindler

This is a double shot. I was away from NBC and reliable internet access for a week.

The strangest thing from the past two episodes has been the reveal of the eliminations. Why are they faking it, then showing each comic's farwell, taped ahead of time?

The judges came back, and I like all three of them. But what are they supposed to be doing as judges? Any time a laugh is weak, the office wants the viewers to blame the audience, because saying that it was the comic's fault is just bad business. In the first of these two episodes the judges are kinda useless. Just reporting on the crowd reaction and telling us a tiny bit about their own. Natasha Leggero tells Johnagin his wasn't her "favorite set." OK. If that's what critiques are going to be, why not just have random members of the audience say either 'I loved it' or 'it's not my style'? But Leggero is probably not to blame. Even if she did say more, and she backed it up with meaningful observations, it would probably be cut. I'm sure the producers/agents don't want any of these potential clients/employees to be critiqued by comics who know how to recognize vulnerabilities in an act.

Is any judge going to comment on the fact that Myq Kaplan always refers to the previous act? He's obviously a crowd favorite, and he can even get away with telling the crowd to shut up.

Rachel Feinstein's characters sure last a long time, and the approval of the judges telling her she was "fantastic" is a nice boost, but it would be much better for her to hear not only Leggero's advice to not end with the Deepak Chopra bit, but also a quick explanation of why. Like the fact that in the right club, it'll hit, but on NBC, no one in the audience knows who the hell Chopra is.

Thymius botches his "on a scale 1 to 10, I weigh..." joke. I'm not sure if in her comments, Leggero is retelling it for the sake of the audience or if she thinks he needs the help. But it's nice to see that the judges are listening.

Giraldo's assessment of Thymius as an "old school" comic because he stays in character all the way through is a good observation, but he should add that it's an obvious character that makes it notable. Every one of these comics is in character the whole time they're on stage.

I'm not sure if Myq Kaplan just stole Roy Wood Jr's chicken nugget joke or if he just botched it? Shouldn't he have said that he got an extra nugget? That would have been a better call-back.

Tommy Johnagin has the best backstage clips, and the more I hear Mike DeStefano, the more I like him. His material on how people's values are screwed up, and how self-image says a lot about character are more than just funny. They're worth listening to.

Between Felipe Esparza and Rachel Feinstein I was OK with either leaving. Or rather, I was ok with either moving on to the next round. I like Esparza's strange combination of character with one-liners and stories. He's rough, but I like that I'm trying to figure him out while he's on stage. Feinstein is more polished, a smoother performer, and obviously more deliberate in her delivery. Strangely, that might be her liability. We've seen what she's got. And while her talent deserves more attention (i.e. more air time), Esparza is just more interesting right now. He's more of a feral comic. We need to know if he'll bite.

So back to an earlier point: Esparza celebrates then we see that Rachel knew she was leaving?

So there are two possibilities: either 1) everyone does a farewell clip beforehand, just in case, or 2) the producers are sneaky and they don't care that faking surprise might look cheap to a few viewers. It's gotta be the first one.