Is This Thing (Still) On?

Alright, let’s be honest: how many of you even remembered Last Comic Standing was still on? I know, me neither! So you can imagine my surprise when I turned on the TiVo Thursday night and found a new episode waiting for me to recap. (And yes I know it’s actually a Tuesday show, but since I’m also covering Rock Star: Supernova, and it’s on at the same time as LCS here in the Mountain Time Zone, I don’t get to watch LCS until the Thursday night rebroadcast on Bravo.) Of course, if my loyal readers (Hi Mom!) want to take up a collection to get me a dual-tuner TiVo, I certainly wouldn’t stand in their way…Anyway, when last we left the last comics standing, JoeyGay and Bil Dwyer had both been eliminated. This episode picks up with Chris and Michele returning victorious to the boat. Once again, the comics are surprised to see Michele come back. After three straight wins, you’d think they’d wise up and back off the old lady. You cannot stop the AARP. You can only hope to contain it.

Up next, in a none-too-subtle bit of foreshadowing, we get a nice little montage of the comedians on the phone. Turns out they’re each allowed to make one call every other day, and that’s it. This is supposed to keep secrets about the show from leaking out, and to prevent people on the outside from writing jokes for them. Chris says the phone rules are just like being in prison, which I hope for his sake is knowledge he’s only getting from Prison Break or Reform School Girls, cuz then I’d start thinking of his goofy hair as more pedophile than lazy comic.

During the phone calls section, we learn that Gabe is in a new relationship with a woman who changed his life. In other words, he didn’t have to pay her for sex. And Ty feels really guilty for missing his daughter’s birthday. Not to worry, though, because he’s only missing it for the chance to earn some money to some day put her through school, and he promises to never, ever miss her birthday again. Yeah, that’ll be an easy promise to keep. Just to be safe, I think he should sock a little of the money away to pay for her therapy some day.

Later, Anthony brings everyone up on deck to explain this week’s challenge, which is the Friar’s Club Roast. Now, they just have to decide who’s going to be the roasters, and who will be the roastee. To do that, each comic gets a cigar, which they have to put in the box with the name of the comic they want to roast. The person with the most cigars gets roasted. One last thing: there is no immunity up for grabs in this challenge, and it’s the last challenge before the real finals begin. So there’s going to be six comics in the finals? Dang. That seems a bit excessive. Chris is upset there’s no immunity up for grabs, but he’ll be happy with the respect and fear another victory will give him. And if that doesn’t do it, he’ll just start telling more prison stories.

Anyway, after the cigars are counted, Gabe has the most with three in his box. Why? Duh. He’s going to be the easiest to write jokes about. It’s not like anyone wanted to roast Josh, for fear of looking bad for picking on a cripple. But picking on a fat dude? That’s comedy gold, Jerry! Comedy gold!

Next, the comics are all sitting around writing material for the roast. Ty has a great line about Gabe’s favorite flavor of Snapple being Gravy that for some reason is edited out of the roast. Gabe is actually okay with being roasted, because he says he loves all roasts… pot roast, roasted chicken… See, even he knows that fat jokes kill.

At the Friar’s of Beverly Hills, we meet the judges: Phyllis Diller (she’s still alive? I’ve got to get her name out of my office Dead Pool), Gilbert Gottfried and Alonzo Bodden, who won Season Three of LCS, the one that nobody watched. And our Roast Master is none other than Little Jimmy Norton! Yay! You probably know Norton from his stint on the Opie and Anthony Show. He was also a regular on the much-missed Tough Crowd with Colin Quinn on Comedy Central. And he had the distinction of being kicked off Season Two of LCS once they found out he had a contract with another show. Although that didn’t stop them from letting Bil Dwyer on this season, now did it? If only the producers had eliminated JoeyGay earlier for not being funny.

Do not adjust your sets.

Before I start on the roast, can I just say that Gabe has the best laugh ever? I swear, his whole set could be nothing but him standing on stage laughing and it would still be funnier than Stella’s routine.

Rather than go through everyone’s routine, I’ll just give you a couple highlights from each comic’s set. Josh says roasting Gabe is like roasting the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man. And he hopes that Gabe got a lot of money for selling his tusks.

Rebecca is just horrible. This challenge really shows her biggest weakness: she’s not funny. And she can’t write. She looks totally lost standing there and not being able to kick her little dwarf leg up in the air.

Ty gets a weird edit from the producers. They don’t show his gravy joke, and instead show a lame joke about Rebecca and Josh, and that’s it. It makes him look like he doesn’t understand the concept of the roast.

Michele makes fun of Gabe being both fat and Mexican, saying he’s lucky he was born here, because he’s too fat to climb the fence.

Hey, these are the jokes, people.

Kristin is up next, and she bombs just as badly as Rebecca. Her best joke? Gabe doesn’t fit the typical Mexican stereotype, because he’s not too lazy to steal… the food off of anyone’s plate! I’m a little surprised at how bad Kristin is, because so far this season she at least seemed like she had the potential to be funny.

It’s Roz’s turn. And in typical Roz fashion, she yells her way through her entire set. Also in typical Roz fashion, her punchline is bleeped out. I don’t understand why she has to yell in a setting like this. I know it’s her schtick, but the audience is sitting right there. I hope she at least ate a tin of Altoids before going on.

Chris goes last, and we finally get to see someone who understands the concept of the roast. He gives a quick putdown to a few of the other panelists and judges, including a great bit about Norton being a registered sex offender, then tears right into Gabe, introducing him as the rock that chased Indiana Jones and the only comic who is visible from space. Yeah, they’re still fat jokes, but they’re intelligent fat jokes. Big distinction. Get it? Big? I kill me.

After the break, it’s Gabe’s turn to get back at the other comics, or, as he calls them, the runners-up. His best line is about Kristin, whom he says is now so successful she’ll finally be able to quit her real job: that’s right, from now on she’s banging midgets for free.

Time for the judging. Alonzo runs some okay smack about the comics. Phyllis says three of the comics go to her hairdresser. And then it’s Gilbert’s turn. I know he gets a lot of flack for his voice, but seriously, Gilbert has to be one of the top five comedians performing today. Without a doubt. Don’t believe me? Rent The Aristocrats this weekend. Or listen to one of his guest turns on Howard. The guy is always on, and he always kills. Tonight, his best line is for Josh, whose material is so weak Gilbert suggests he also go blind.

Anyway, the judges pick Chris as the winner. Big surprise there. And while there’s no immunity this round, he does win a chance to perform with Louie Anderson in Vegas, and a one-year membership to the Friar’s Club. Sure, opening for Louie doesn’t sound that great, especially since he isn’t exactly the freshest standup out there, but it is in Vegas. Besides, Louie created and starred in one of the best cartoons of the 90s — Life With Louie — so I’ll give him a pass.

The next day on the boat, the comics are all hanging out when one of the producers catches Gabe with a Blackberry. At first Gabe tries to play it off like he’s sleeping, as fat Mexicans are wont to do, but the producer keeps asking him what he has behind the pillow, and eventually he has to give it up. Communicating with the outside world is a serious breach of contract, as we learned in the foreshadowing at the beginning of tonight’s episode. And just in case you forgot how serious it was, several of the comics go on camera and reiterate how serious a breach of contract it is. Evidently, it must also be a serious breach of contract not to tell us how serious a breach of contract it is.

If that isn’t a loaded question…

The next time we see Gabe, he’s outside meeting with Peter Engel and Jane Lipsitz, the Executive Producers of the show. They tell Gabe that his use of a Blackberry was a very serious breach of contract. To make matters worse, they say that last night, after they took his Blackberry away, they caught him sneaking out of his room and using another phone somewhere else on the ship. Obviously, this sort of contractual breach cannot go unpunished, so they kick Gabe off the show. Gabe is a little upset, but not nearly as upset as the producers seem. Evidently, they were really hoping to pin their fall sitcom hopes on Gabe’s ample bosom. Because there just aren’t enough sitcoms on the air now where the leading man is overweight. I bet they were going to give him a hot wife way out of his league, too.

Time for the Boiler Room! Anthony explains to the other comics what happened with Gabe. Josh, who shared a room with Gabe, says that now he understands why there was a phone charger in their bathroom. Michele says if only she could figure out how to plant cell phones in all the other comics’ rooms, she’d actually have a chance to come in second. Okay, she said she’d win, but we all know that second is really the best she can hope for at this point.

Evidently, being on-camera while on-camera adds at least 20 pounds.

The rules for the voting are the same as always. Each comic has to name one other comic they know they’re funnier than. The comic with the most votes against them gets to pick two other comics from the ones who voted for them to go up against in the head-to-head-to-head elimination joke-off. Just once I’d like to see all the comics name the comic sitting to their right, so I can see Anthony’s head explode trying to figure out what to do next.

Alas, it’s not going to happen that way this week either. Instead, here’s how the votes went down: Rebecca votes for Ty; Ty votes for Kristin; Chris votes for Josh; Roz votes for Rebecca; Kristin votes for Rebecca; Josh votes for Ty; and Michele votes for Kristin. Not surprisingly, nobody thought they were funnier than either Chris or Michele.

That means the head-to-head-to-head will be Rebecca versus Kristin versus Ty. And Michele, Josh, Chris and Roz are all guaranteed to be in the final five.

Before the competition, the comics are shown getting ready. Ty says he’s going to do whatever it takes to win. Michele gives Rebecca a pep talk. Rebecca is worried, saying she doesn’t know if she has the balls Michele has, but to be fair, who among us does? (Besides Lizard Queen, of course.) And Kristin just wants to stop banging midgets.

Onstage, Kristin starts off with the same old teeny boobs joke, then launches into some new material about drinking with college kids and setting her pubic hair on fire. As painful as it sounds, she says it still beats waxing. I wish I’d heard of this method before I got my vasectomy a few weeks ago.

Rebecca is up next. In case you didn’t know it, she’s short. And she kicks a lot. She tells some lame joke about Wow chips, which are like ten years old. I’m surprised she didn’t talk about Member’s Only jackets and parachute pants. It ends with her taking an Olestra-fueled dump while kicking, and somehow she tries to take credit for the name Wow chips, which goes contrary to the whole setup of her joke. In case you can’t tell, me no likee Rebecca.

Finally, it’s Ty’s turn. And honestly, at this point he could read the directions for baking a cake in German and win. And while his material is no “Die Eier Von Satan,” his bit about Lois Lane winning half of Superman’s powers in their divorce settlement is enough to win, sending Kristin and Rebecca home.

So, next week the real finals begin, with Chris versus Josh versus Roz versus Ty versus Michele in a head-to-head-to-head-to-head-to-head competition. Barring Michele successfully planting cell phones in everyone’s room, any early predictions on who will come in second, since we all know Chris is going to win?

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