Last Comic Standing 4, Episode 6: Crotch Football

After last week’s rather long article for Episode 5 was sent off, I realized that I never did mention who won the online voting for Week 3. Strangely enough, only one person wrote in to ask why I didn’t mention it. This either says something about the lack of concern people have for the online vote, or that no one is reading the articles. I’ll say it’s the first one so I can sleep better at night.

It almost goes without saying, but it was Nikki Payne. As for Week 4, the five contestants up were Doug Benson, Bruce Fine, Moody McCarthy, J. Chris Newberg, and Josh Wolf. The winner was Josh Wolf, which surprised me somewhat as I still thought Doug Benson was the best of the group.

So far the four online finalists: Kaitlin Colombo, Wild Willy Parson, Nikki Payne, and Josh Wolf. This week, the final group of semi-finalists will have their sets up on the NBC.com site for people to vote for. They are: Matt Fulchiron, Modi Rosenfeld, John Roy, Flip Schultz, and Theo Von. Now, I say “final” as NBC stated that there would only be five rounds and then the five winners would go up against each other. However, it should be pointed out that even if the comics shown over the past few weeks had been from the semi-finals it would leave three comics not having had a chance to be seen. Also, the first online vote included comics that didn’t even make it to the semi-finals (including the winner, Kaitlin Colombo). So maybe they will play this out a little longer to give the rest of the semi-finalists a chance to win the online contest.

If things go as NBC stated originally (and, let’s be fair, sometimes they change their plans midway through these things), the online finalists will go up against each other online. The two comics who get the top votes will then appear on the next-to-last episode of LCS4 in order to compete against each other for the viewers at home. Viewers will vote for their favorite online comic while also voting for the Last Comic Standing of the remaining comics from the Queen Mary. This has already caused some confusion for fans who believe that the comics returning will “go to the house” and/or compete against the remaining Queen Mary contestants. It’s really two separate contests, with final competitions and winners being picked in the same episodes, not combined into one contest. To do that, really, wouldn’t be very fair to the people who had to go through all the challenges and competitions anyway when you think about it.

Before heading into this week’s episode, a quick look at the ratings: Episode 5 got back up to a 4.8 with an 8 share, which was a bounce back after a couple of 4.0 these past two weeks. It ended up third after Fox with House and ABC with basketball, but did place first in non-special programming for the networks in the 18-49 demographics, with a 3.5. So things aren’t looking too shabby for the show.

Nor for Michele as she heads back to the Queen Mary at the start of this week’s episode. She beat April Macie and Stella Stolper in the first three-way head-to-head competition with 83% of the vote. Everyone appears to be happy to see her back, although Michele suspected that they would be expecting April to appear at the door instead of her. Kristin Key figures that after Michele’s win, no one will want to face her.

To calm everyone’s nerves after the busy day, the group is treated to a Moroccan dinner, featuring twins as belly dancers with snakes around their necks. No idea if the snakes are twins as well. Josh says as he sees the girls come in, “Jesus DOES listen to my prayers!” After the girls dance for a while, some of the comics join in and it’s mildly amusing, but if the producers were expecting riotous comedy from the situation, they were no doubt sadly disappointed. Still, the comics thought it was pretty cool.

What isn’t cool is being woken up at 2:30 in the morning for the next challenge. No one is sure why, but they get dressed and stumble onto the bus. Well, all except Bil Dwyer, who is wide awake and happily sits through the trip with no problem as everyone else tries to get some sleep on the brightly-lit bus. They arrive at KLSX in Los Angeles at 5:30 in the morning.

Now here’s an interesting thing: The Queen Mary is in Long Beach, California. Adam Carolla’s show is broadcast out of KLSX in Los Angeles. A quick check on MapQuest shows that the distance between the two places is 27.58 miles, for a normal driving time of 35 minutes. The comics left at 3:30 and arrived at 5:30, so they were driving for a full two hours in the middle of the night to go less than thirty miles. Was the idea that of making the comics extra-tired before they had to do their challenge? Could be, but if so, it is never mentioned on the show. Instead, it looks like they just got a bad driver who didn’t know where they were going.

At the studio, Anthony Clark – the host of LCS4 – is nowhere to be seen. He evidently doesn’t need to get up at 2:30, or even 5:30, to go anywhere. Instead, Adam greets the group to tell them that the challenge is for them to each take an envelope on the table in front of them. In each envelope is a magazine that the comics must then write a one-minute routine about, which they will then perform on Adam’s radio show that morning. Adam will judge the comics and pick a winner, who will then have immunity from the next head-to-head competition. Adam comes off as rather socialable and, ironically enough, a better host for the show than Anthony Clark from what we’ve seen so far in the series.

Chris feels like he’s dead when he pulls out a magazine called Latina Weddings. It’s in Spanish and he doesn’t read or speak it. Josh gets Weapons of Death, which he jokes is an issue that he already has. Bil gets Sscats! and doesn’t seem enthused, nor do most of the others when they see their magazines. Meanwhile, Kristin wonders if she is the true underdog of the comics and is worried that she’ll be picked for the next head-to-head.

Roz is first with an astrology/numerology/sex magazine. She reads off her jokes – focusing on the sex aspect – in a flat fashion and doesn’t come off well. Gabriel is next with an agricultural magazine and is somewhat better than Roz. Chris seems to just wait for the torture to end as he stumbles through some stuff about the wedding magazine, but Ty kills with some good material about the car magazine he was given.

Michele does well with hers, but Josh Blue realizes that he is eating it as he goes through the paces. Bil lucked out with cats, as it’s an easy and traditional comedy setup and thus he comes off well. Joey starts off okay, but stumbles early and Adam’s comments only make it worse. He states later than he hated doing it, and combine that with his lack of participation in the previous challenge (the heckling one from Episode 4) and one gets the impression that improvising material is not one of Joey’s strong suits. Or, perhaps, that he really hates being told to suddenly spring forth a fountain of material on demand. I wouldn’t be surprised if the latter was really the case.