Traveller519

Monroe reminds me of Columbus Short's character from Studio 60 (there's a quality reference). He's a smart young guy who has good material to work with, but doesn't have the general stage presence required of a presenter. I like the material of his that I've seen, but he struggles when he goes off script. I hope he gets a writing job out of the show. I'm surprised to see DC Benny leave so early. He seemed to me to be a long shot to go far with polished material and a lot of confidence in what he was doing. His material wasn't great but it seemed consistently strong enough to get him by. Lachlan clearly had the better set (usual editing caveat) though and he deserved the win.

TBBT Theory and Modern Family still have a spot on my rotation, but they're becoming increasingly "laundry shows" (that is what I flip on while I'm doing something menial around the house such a folding laundry). I have no doubt that those shows have broader appeal, but based on this season alone I would have taken B99 over either. The show emmy is Veep's to lose I hope.

Todd Barry does a great bit on Tom's of Maine on "Super Crazy." It's unfortunate when I see a a good bit like that but know I've seen it done better by a more polished comedian because it looks like rip-off even if it's not intended as such. In other cases, I cringe. Brian Reagan does a far better smoke signals bit than Jimmy Shubert.

I completely agree, it was obviously a successful business model for him, but in those rare flashes we see now of his comedic talent you can't help but see the wasted opportunity.

Sorry for the confusion. Patton isn't on my wish list, seeing as he has done an episode. I was referring to the comedy totem pole. How most of the folks that appear on this show wouldn't show up on something like @midnight, but the ones who are on @midnight have a little bit further to get to the level of most of Seinfeld's guests to date. I was pointing out how in having done both shows, Oswalt is a big time comedian who gets that headliner acceptance from his peers but is happy to go on lesser known comedians podcasts or a show like @midnight to support the up-and-comers.

Always enjoy seeing you on these comedy forums, Kromm. This was exactly the reason I wanted this thread to start going. I posted about the female diversity issue in the Season 4 thread. I agree with you on a lot of points. I would like to see him have JLD on as well, since he's had David, Richards, and "Costanza" on already. It seems that on the comedy totem poles there's Comedians in Cars getting Coffee/Headliner @midnight/podcast phenom Last Comic Standing/Club Circuit Patton Oswalt, who is a big supporter of good comedy straddles those top two levels, he's a performer the caliber of the top level, but enjoys encouraging the up and comers by doing Podcasts, and showing up on @Midnight every once in a while. I feel like Seinfeld could help elevate some careers by getting some of the top performers in that mid tier level on the show. I'd love to see Amy Schumer, Key and Peele, Anthony Jeselnick, Maria Bamford, or Daniel Tosh do the show, since their comedy is so different. Who's the youngest person he's had on so far? Seth Meyers?

The speeding ticket moment of the Rock episode was just brilliant.

I didn't mind the Sarah Jessica Parker epsiode, but it highlights the one weakness in the show to me. Over the course of the series, four seasons, there have only been 3 female comedians, and there were none in the first (and longest) season. I know there weren't a lot of female comedians working the circuits when Seinfeld was, and those are the people he wants to interact with, but damn, man, there are some very funny ladies out there.

I actually found some insightful moments out of Jay's episode. It was interesting to see Jerry's edit of both the Letterman and Leno episodes juxtaposed against one another. Leno by the end of the Tonight show was insufferable, it was pandering material to a demographic. I'm disappointed that he compromised so much for the sake of the show because he still at times displays razor sharp comic wit. 2 moments in the past year stand out for me. Before the James Franco Roast last year, Natasha Leggero was on the show, and Jay invited her to do some roast jokes of him. He had quick comebacks that were sharp and focused. Second, he was on Ferguson last year and Cameron Esposito was the comedian that night. Her bit had some Leno jokes included and Jay played along and gave her some business back. Both clips are worth checking out. But back on the season. The Louis CK episode was fantastic, the animated story had me in stitches.

Every damn time! Every summer Last Comic Standing airs, I get sucked in early on because of my love of stand up comedy and I'm excited for the exposure to some new comics. And more often than not I feel ridiculous for the time that I spend on it. The reality TV show nature of the show kills so much of the comedy. The need to advance contrasting styles just because, the editing that makes comedy feel so disjointed, and the real crime, the reduction of stand up to 3-5 minute sets. Rod Man fits the format so well, and he obviously has enough material to pull from, but he's a poor man's Kevin Hart and I don't think I'd enjoy a full set of his. I really agree it's disappointing that there are so few women moving on, and what's even more disappointing are the ones who moved on. Aida and Nikki both have tired material in my opinion. I would have taken Tracey Ashley, Dana Eagle, Chloe Hilliard, Emily Galati, Tyree Elaine, and even Zainab over either of them. Speaking of tired material, why do we have to endure more Jimmy and Rocky do the same jokes they've done for the alst 15+ years? I'd much rather have watched Dave, Mark, Nick, John or Mr. Mitra work to hone their craft. To be fair, there are already those types of people moving on in Karlous, Monroe, Lachlan, and Joe. Okay, ranting over. I do like those last four I listed and hope they do well. DC is probably the odds on favorite to win. He's polished, has a style, is still somewhat fresh, and would probably be easy to build a show around with his story telling basis.

Her Album, "Two First Names" was released this year. It's available on iTunes. It's a good chuckle.

Very valid point. And going back to Season 1, Vos and Mordal were the most pleasant to watch since they actually had that history. And they probably would have fallen into that bracket.

I agree with Kromm, the Hawking interview felt like a bit of a wasted opportunity. There was one semi-serious question off the start, and then a bunch of what felt like nothing. It was funny, which got the point across, but I've come to expect a little more depth from the show. The Immigration Reform topic hit on one aspect that I think bore some more weight. That this isn't a limited scope American issue, around the world countries with high net immigration are facing a notable level of public resistance, because of fear of change of ways of life. Or at least that's the claim. There are many countries resisting the immigration of people who "don't look like us" through whatever seemingly politically correct lens they can slap on it. Also instead of just stating that there were studies refuting those general talking points about jobs and crime, I wish he had flushed out what the counterpoints were. As is usually the case, the loudest voices tend to be the most uninformed. We've heard the talking points for keeping a lid on immigration, which can be rationalized through fear. Give us the basis for why this shouldn't be the case, John.

The Jimmy Shuberts and Rocky Laportes definitely feel like club circuit comedians trying to give it one last go at the big time. I get it, you don't know anything else and you don't want to do the travel circuit any more. but if you haven't been able to develop anything on your own, or have someone like Mike Judge develop something for you, it might be indicative of the fact that you're done. The age of Social Media has made it easy for young and driven comedians to market themselves, which the older folks here appear to have missed on.

I don't thin it's possible for anyone to Dat their way to victory anymore, not under this format anyway. You have to have a lot of material and be able to sell it all well in brief segments. Dat's segments rarely deviated from his Vietnamese family and often involved the same jokes. It looks like it's going to be the judges that decide who wins so it won't come down to the voting public going with the nice guy. I can get how Maachi's style won't be everyone's cup of tea, and I don't think there's much you could do with him as the central character on a sitcom. But he's owning the stage presence right now.

I was surprised. I really figured Tracey Ashley was going to make it through, Although I do still think she's already too big for this show. The Hippo/ATM is one of her oldest jokes though. She did that one twice in one of the earlier seasons. I imagine she still does it because it gets good laughs and she sells it well, but I've heard it too many times at this point. It's interesting just how subjective comedy is. Everyone has their favorites and others can't stand them. Jimmy Shubert is a fine comedian, I'd enjoy seeing him at a comedy club, but he feels really out of place on the show. His material is very throwback, I don't find much fresh about it. Aida just isn't too my stylings. She feels like a female Dane Cook to me, in that she talks about herself in a very built up manner, and doesn't mix in much self-deprecating material to offset it. Karlous' "mentor-session" was a disaster, but I enjoyed the set he put together. Two guys who I enjoyed from the first round but came out with flat sets were Mark Normand and Nick Guerra. Nick's pretty raw still but I really enjoy Mark's stuff. I would have liked to have seen his mentoring session they Teased with Amy telling him that maybe he should try a different career. My top 5 would have been Monroe Martin, Mark Normand, Tracey Ashley, Karlous Miller, and Joe Maachi.

While maybe not to the FIFA levels of global transgression, the North American Major Sport Leagues aren't much better for doing things that are ridiculous that we live with because we really enjoy tuning it all out to watch the games. The new NFL scheduling is a perfect example. Very few people like the concept of Thursday Night games outside of Thanksgiving. Teams are on a short week, it messes with Fantasy Football scheduling, people have other things going on during their weekday evenings, and until recently, you could only watch those games if you got NFL Network. But the league wants to increase exposure so it plays those games every week. And the ratings support them continuing to expand that. Or moving regular season games to England to broaden its exposure. Meanwhile the NFL operates as a not-for-profit, while paying it's Commisioner $44.2m in 2012, has swept injury information under the rug, continues to raise prices while limiting player involvement in increased profit share, and we as a fan base complain. But we let that quiet down when we turn on the games.

After the high of Debate these ones felt a bit flat, but still had a healthy number of laughs. Firing someone because of the wrong name felt so typical for this group. Poor Sweet Ben getting his old job back and hating it. I enjoyed his quips about everyone, different to see him bossing everyone around.

I loved when she sung the hook on Resolution, Revolution. I don't know if that depended on her being black though she definitely brought some soul to it.

Cringe Humor, the year DAT won, showed up to one of his shows and presented him with an "award" that was "The Worst Comedy Moment of the Year: Dat Phan wins Last Comic Standing." And took a picture with him. Cringehumor.net isn't working for me right now. I have no idea if they've stopped running it, or I'd link to the article. Their YouTube channel is still up, though, with the video of Rich and Patrice O'Neal busting him up on Tough Crowd. DAT is a Hack who makes it work. He would study his shows and thus push everything that worked together. The result is something you can't help but laugh at when you hear it for the first time. His energy is infectous, and the voice is funny. He just has no breadth. Patton Oswalt's critique of the show, which Jay Mohr didn't like, was that it promoted that kind of humor. Having a great 5-10 minutes, but nothing more. Tammy Pescatelli was the same way for me, she relied on Ethnic jokes and you heard the same ones over and over. I enjoy Eliza, though didn't like her newest album as much as her first. I think she surprised everyone when she continued to come out and do fresh material every time she got challenged. She got taken to the show downs the first two or three weeks in a row, which completely back fired on the other comics. Instead of exhausting her material, she kept coming with more, and the audience was the most comfortable with her. I'll always have love for my fellow Canadian, Gerry Dee. It took him 3 years, that we saw, to make it to the final 10. He's had a good stable career in Canada since the show.

comedy is so subjective that the comedians unfortunately get graded through whatever frame people's preferences set out for them. As mentioned above they're being graded on a couple factors. In addition to their stand-up and ability to do something with the NBC Developmental Contract, they're also trying to be evaluated on how they'll handle being a part of the ensemble that is the show going around. There's a lot of diversity, which is good for avoiding However many weeks of getting the same style of jokes thrown at you, but it means the "characters" tend to creep through, and people's without the breadth of stand-up get through. My case in point. There have been some very funny black women come through. I thought Zanaib Johnson's stuff was fantastic last week. Tracey Ashley is a known commodity at this point with her Album coming out to much applause earlier this year. Chloe Hilliard had good material. And Tyree Elaine had some nice fresh energy. But the two that advanced this week seemed to fall into the old Stereotypes, which were more Characters. Nikki Carr had the "tell you what it's like" swagger, and Yamaneika Saunders was the man-eater. Add in Erin Jackson from the first week who I don't think will be able to distance herself from Tracey. 4 I thought were great stand-ups, and 3 of those I hadn't seen before and am very interested to see more from as we progress. The two that advanced this week I didn't enjoy as stand-ups, but seem like they will be fun in the ensemble, and the producers likely see as someone to build a sitcom around. Regardless. The fact that of the 28 finalists, 7 are black women shows off just how ridiculous it was of NBC's other bastion of comedy, SNL, to drag its heel's in finding a Black female perfomer.

I agree that Kenan is probably the most ready to move on due to age (though he may not want to) and Nasim seems most likely to depart due to having another project lined up (for the record I think she'll stay on the show for the first few months to see whether Mulaney gets a full season order). If those two were to leave it would help to work on the cast size issue. However, it won't help the diversity issue. I normally don't have an issue with cast diversity on a show, since they'll tend to reflect actual demographics of the situation, and I care more about the show being funny. However for the broad sketch nature of SNL having a diverse cast is a big leg up because it gives you more options on what you can do, unless you're going to dress people up as other cultures as they've done previously. However, the PC nature of things these days has really trended away from that ever being a good idea. Last Week Tonight had a whole segment on it a few weeks back.

Well done, ganesh. Well done indeed! Thornhill definitely seems to have that Howard Dean/Herman Cain element to him. The somewhat atypical politician who seems to be a breath of fresh air early in the debate process and gets people excited. I imagine he'll burn out and Maddox will pull it together, not before causing Selina and the team some heartburn though.

Nobody get's a free pass. Well maybe except Arby's. They've paid their dues.

Seeing the 90s animated series on Netflix after watching DOFP has meant I've been sucked into a rewatch. Partway through season 1 right now. Lot's of Cameos in the Genosha episode, interestingly a couple that overlapped with the DOFP movie (Sunspot and Warpath)