Last Comic Standing 2, Episode 1: The Premiere

The premiere of Last Comic Standing 2 occurred Tuesday night on NBC, coming back nearly one year to the date of the first season's opening episode.

But first off, a little information about us and our reviews. I'm Dale Sherman and I was the reviewer on Last Comic Standing for RNO last year, as well as reviewing such shows as The Joe Schmo Show, The Anna Nicole Show (both frightful seasons), The Osbournes, and even helping out on the WWE Tough Enough series. I'm also the author of five books on musicians and music-related topics.

Mike DeGeorge is just some guy I know.

No, wait, there's more to Mike than that. Mike is not only a good writer and regular columnist here at RNO, having written about Tough Enough, Temptation Island 2&3, My Big Fat Obnoxious Fiancé, and ESPN Dream Job, among others, but is also in the lofty position of Assistant Editor here at RNO. Still, Mike will be contributing to these LCS2 articles whenever he sees fit, giving readers a chance to hear two varied viewpoints on the comics featured in the program. In fact, as with last year, Mike and I will be spending this and the next article trading off on discussing the comics about whom we felt need some additional comments to be made.

As to some background on the series itself: for those of you who are coming back after reading our articles for Season One, welcome back! We hope we'll be able to give you as much in depth and varied news and interviews about this season as we did with the first. As for new readers, you can get an idea of what to expect in our reviews by checking out all the news, reviews, and interviews we did last year right here.

We realize that some of you may be checking in for the very first time or for the first time since Dat Phan won the first season. Because of this, you've may have missed out on some of the articles we've done in the past few months that cover events and people connected with both seasons of the show, including news about the finalists from Season One, as well as information about Season Two's try-outs (covered in tonight's premiere episode) and the Paris show (which will be covered in Episode Two, airing on June 9).

In order to save space here and avoid reiterating information that longtime readers have already seen, we've decided to list the links to the earlier articles to get everyone else back up to speed:

• First off, for information on what the ten finalists from Season One have been doing; including exclusive comments from Rich Vos, Cory Kahaney, Rob Cantrell, Tere Joyce and Dave Mordal, click here.
• For our original report on the auditions for LCS2 and where the try-outs were to be, check here.
• For our first follow-up report on the try-outs, check here.
• For our second follow-up report on the try-outs, check here.
• For coverage on the Paris try-outs finale, and thoughts about the "Drew & Brett" controversy, click here.

Since that pretty much puts us right up to date on the show, we'll head right into the review of the June 8 premiere episode.

The show begins in Times Square, with host Jay Mohr wearing a coat that obviously suggests it was shot during the winter (probably at the time of the New York open-call auditions). He welcomes the viewers back to Last Comic Standing and does a brief recap mention the finale of Season One where the Dat Phan won over Ralphie May "in a HUGE upset in Las Vegas." Yep, no telling how Jay felt about that. It's also amusing that the clip (showing Dat hugging Ralphie) looks for the world like Ralphie would rather hug a leper.

Anyway, the show then goes into a brief montage of clips about Dat, showing him on The Tonight Show, and a very brief clip from his Comedy Central special. In an interview clip, Dat tells the camera, "One year ago I was living under a desk… now I'm touring around the country, which is really awesome." Dat also mentions his appearance on The West Wing and in the movie Cellular, before concluding that he never thought it was possible to end up where he was today, "but it's happening."

Following up on Dat's words, Jay comes back on screen to tell viewers how the finalists for the show were picked. The first stop is the open-calls in eight cities around the country. There, thousands of comics got a chance to try out in front of Bob Reed And Ross Mark, the talent coordinators from The Tonight Show, in order to whittle the group down to 40. Then, it would be reduced to a final 10 that will go to the house to battle against each other in competitions in front of a live audience, in order to find a winner. The winner of the show will then get a talent contract with NBC, a stand-up comedy special on Comedy Central, and, as Jay put, "will begin to walk through doors which only open for the truly talented. And Paris Hilton."

While Jay plays up the rules for a gag, Bob Red and Ross Mark are interviewed to discuss what they are looking for when auditioning the comics. "We're looking for a star," Reed emphasizes. "A person that has the whole package. [A person] that can handle their own show and is a great person; not just onstage, but offstage also."

With that, the show skips over to a segment on the first tryouts that were done on January 13, 2004, at the Improv in Los Angeles. The camera travels down a line of people that seemingly goes on forever – starting with a man who had waited there since 5:30 the previous day in order to be first in line, to a guy in the back that points out with melancholy in his voice that, "this is the last of the line. Literally."