Last Comic Standing: Those results were a joke, right?

It’s the semi-finals! This is usually the point during a reality competition show when I start to tune in – on American Idol, for example, I almost never watch the audition rounds. Not unless Katy Perry is guest judging or something. But Last Comic Standing has actually been good during the early audition rounds – the episodes highlighted the good talent, the actually funny comedians who made it through to the next round. And that’s a good thing, because it means that going into Monday nights first semi-finals episode we actually cared about some of the people we watched.

Myq Kaplan was first up – I felt lukewarm about him at best when we met him last week. His set was much funnier than I expected. I loved the bit about “Brad Pitt is in this book” and the bit about the devil and gays. I still don’t love that he spells Mike “Myq”, but he’s growing on me. Next up was Jamie Lee, one of my favorites from a couple weeks ago. Once again she struck me as very funny, but a bit inexperienced when it came to delivery. Mike DeStefano, who’d made it to the semi-finals at the same time as Jamie, wasn’t one of my favorites. I didn’t think he deserved to make it through to the semi-finals over Jared Logan, and I don’t think he brought it. The only bit that made me laugh was when he said his father was a gambler and that “we were rich seven times”.

I was excited to see what Kyle Grooms would bring to the semi-finals because he had me cracking up last week. He didn’t disappoint – I thought his entire set was hilarious. Haiti threw a benefit concert for Detroit! America has theme parks to play in water when other countries don’t have water to drink! Funny, funny stuff.

I didn’t remember seeing Shane Mauss, but if I did I’m guessing I wasn’t very impressed by him. I thought he was trying to hard with his joke about the girl’s legs getting chopped off on a rollercoaster ride. Adrienne Iapalucci followed Shane, and I remembered her very well. Her jokes were funny, and I like her dry, sarcastic delivery. I couldn’t believe that the judges were so impressed with Felipe Esparza. I didn’t find him very funny at all. Jonathan Thymius was another guy I couldn’t remember seeing before. He looked like a creep, he took off his sock, and he didn’t make me laugh a single time – and STILL the judges called him “hilarious”. First of all, I think the term “hilarious” needs to be banned from this show. Because it is used so much that it becomes equivalent to “average”. Second of all, do the judges know they are critiquing professional comedians on a network TV program? I judge elementary school talent competitions more harshly!

Lil’ Rel followed, and his bit about funerals took a looooong route for a couple of so-so jokes. Finally, the judges actually critiqued the performance – only STILL, they said they weren’t criticizing, and thought it was great. And, of course, “hilarious”. Jason Weems was one of the comics that I remembered liking, and I liked him even more once he said he was a kindergarten teacher. I want my (hypothetical) kid to be taught by a stand-up comic – I value humor a lot more than knowing how to tie your own shoes or recite the alphabet. I thought he was pretty funny this week – not my favorite of the night, but I laughed at the stuff about the kindergarten kid thinking he was a monkey. I couldn’t believe that of all the bad comics we’d seen, the judges didn’t rave about him.

Ryan Hamilton is one of my favorites, if only because the tone of his voice and his weird, lanky look make me laugh. I didn’t love his performance, but I’d like to see more of him. Paula Bel and Jesse Joyce also didn’t deliver great sets. I’m rooting for Rachel Feinstein – the judges said it’s hard to be a hot female comedian, and in a lot of ways they’re right. Kirk Fox (sans mustache) was also good, as Amanda Melson. I was glad to see Chris Pope do well, because he’d impressed me during the first episode. I also really liked Alycia Cooper – the back end of the episode seemed rushed, but there were a lot of really funny women in the mix.

After all that, only five comics got to move on. It seemed unfair, I dug way more than five people! And to boot, I was completely unimpressed with the five selected. The five comics who moved on were Felipe Esparza, Myq Kaplan, Rachel Feinsteinl, Mike DeStefano and Jonathan Thymius. What were they thinking? I HATED Felipe and Jonathan, and seriously disliked Myq and Mike. What about Kyle Grooms? I thought he was hilarious! And he left his socks on the whole time! I enjoyed the performances on this episode of Last Comic Standing, but the results left me feeling disgusted. What did you think of the show?