Last Comic Standing 2, Episode 5: In the House I Live In

After two weeks and six hours of programming, we finally have ten comics that are going to the house in L.A. to fight it out.

For those of you that missed our earlier reports, we have the list of the ten finalists below. We also thought some of you might like to check out the official websites of the comics as well, so we have linked their website addresses below. In a couple of cases, we could not locate an official site, but did find some other material of interest about said comics:

• Kathleen Madigan
• Gary Gulman
• Corey Holcomb (Doesn't have an official website, but you can check out his DVD, The Problem Is You, here)
• Todd Glass
• Bonnie McFarland (no official website, but you can read some of her writing here
• ANT
• Alonzo Bodden
• Tammy Pescatelli
• John Heffron
• Jay London (Doesn't have a website, but does have spider webs and a window in his apartment.

We'll be getting to the review here in just a moment, but first some updates on how the show is doing and other items of interest.

As we have reported previously, the ratings for LCS2 have skyrocketed over the previous year, and NBC cannot be happier about it. The show has consistently gotten an average of over 9.5 million viewers each week - a nearly 13% increase in viewers over last year - and has been dominating in the extremely important 18-49 age group demographics. This led to NBC repeating the Paris Finals on Sunday June 20, and for their announcement on June 21 that they will begin showing encore performances of each week's episode on Wednesday nights at 8:00 pm EST starting on June 30. So if you miss the show next Tuesday night, you can catch the repeat on Wednesday (after checking out what happened here first!)

As for those of you who usually just stop by on Wednesday, don't forget to check out our interview with a Paris audience member who witnessed the entire Vegas Finals. You may find some of her comments of interest.

In reporting on the episodes last week, it appears we may have missed out on something that a reader pointed out in an email to us. It turns out that NBC managed to air a preview for the June 22 episode of LCS2 during last Wednesday's episode. The problem with that? The commercial revealed two of the ten going to the house before the winners were announced on the program that night. This certainly showed bad timing on NBC's part. You would think they would know better than that when it comes to programming their advertising for a reality show.

Meanwhile, in an ironic twist of fate, we reported last week that first season comic Dave Mordal was now doing rants for each episode on the NBC site and that we would go to no end to put a stop to it. Well, that joke certainly went flat within a day as his rant disappeared completely from the NBC.com site last Friday. [Note from Mike: That was a joke? Oops…] And don't bother looking for any more now. As we reported last week, a section of Dave's rant where ANT was taken to task about the repetitive nature of his material had been edited out late last week. By the next day, the entire rant was gone.

I emailed Dave as to what was up and his response was brief and to the point, that NBC had censored his rant so he quit. Now some others could try to put a bigger spin on that, but Dave has always been a straight-shooter about things in the times I have talked to him and he certainly was a straight-shooter on the show as well and so if he said he quit, he did exactly that. While we here at RNO have offered Dave a chance to continue his rants here on the site, it appears that he is now moving on to other things and will not be keeping up on the series. Too bad, really, as his voice in the review mix was a nice thing to have for the week it was available.

Finally, we should thank everyone who wrote in over the past week about our reviews of the Paris Finals. We heard from a wide range of people, from those in the comedy profession to the fans and it was nearly all positive feedback. Even in the couple of cases where people disagreed with our position, those readers were 99.9% articulate and compelling in their arguments. Just goes to show that we have a good group of readers coming to us every week.

But enough of patting everyone on the back; let us now turn to tonight's episode and see how the ten do in their first week together in the house.

After a brief recap that repeated Corey Holcomb's statement that there would be "drama - Corey Holcomb Style" in the house, we see the comics being driven in the short bus to their destination. As they travel, ANT comments that it is the closest he had ever been to the Hollywood sign. They then arrive at Disneyland and meet Grumpy. No, wait. They arrive at their new home which has a garden gnome and looks like, as Kathleen Madigan puts it, "If the Brady Kids had been allowed to build their own castle." Bonnie follows up with a comment that the place gives up a porno-film vibe, and Alonzo isn't sure about "this Scooby Dooby house." It certainly is different from the Pee Wee's Playhouse estate that we saw last year.

The group heads to the front of the house/castle/Dr. Doom's lair, whereupon Jay Mohr comes out to greet them. He explains the rules again for the folks at home that in the next few weeks the comics will be living in the house and each week one comic will be eliminated in a comedy challenge "until five remain." Throughout all of this, Bonnie stands on a rock a few feet away from the rest of the group that huddles around Jay. Most probably just to see over everyone else, but it is a telling sign of things to come.