‘Last Comic Standing’ review: Joe Machi, Nikki Carr, and a fun road to the finale
We now know the five comedians who will be facing off for the title of “Last Coming Standing” this season, and it’s an interesting group. There are four who we feel are serious contenders to really take home the title … and then there’s Rocky LaPorte.
Seriously, what has this guy done to really make it here, other than make extremely dated references like his act is still in the 1980s? He does have funny lines, but he has never won a challenge or appeared in a face-off at the end of the episode. This puts him on different footing than everyone else who is still there.
The best part of the episode to us was easily the Roast of Gilbert Gottfried, and we almost wish there was twenty or so minutes more of it. We wanted more people to make fun of J.B. Smoove screaming all of his lines, but to us Joe Machi was the funniest by a mile with his mocking of the other contestants, the audience, and then Gilbert himself. He went in so many different unpredictable directions, and he also had the challenge of starting the show. Rocky went too old, Rod Man’s style of humor didn’t carry over well, and we barely remember most of what Karlous Miller (save for comparing J.B. to Mr. Peanut) and Lachlan Patterson did. The winner was Nikki Carr, and we won’t be too mad about it. She was probably the second-best for us on the challenge, and we realize that we may be biased towards Joe at this point just for getting so much airtime.
The showdown was between Joe, who everyone is seemingly terrified of at this point, and Karlous, and failed dramatically to be anywhere near as epic as Joe and Monroe Martin last week. Karlous looked asleep for about half of his act, and while we did laugh a few times, his bit about “baby mamas” has been done a billion times already. He needs to work in the future on adapting more to the crowd. To be fair, Joe wasn’t significantly better this time, either, almost like he had used so much material during his duel with Monroe that he was trying to pull into some less-successful stuff. It was probably his weakest set of the whole competition, and he probably lucked out that Karlous had a week outing.
We’re still rooting for Joe to win, but everything is going to depend heavily on what happens next week in the title round. We’re going back to straight comedy as we always do at this stage, and the playing field will therefore be level. Rocky and Nikki have had more time to store away material than the others, but Joe may be aided by having performed so much lately that he has a rhythm with the audience. Episode Grade: B.
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Photo: NBC