‘Last Comic Standing’ review: Did Ian Bagg, Clayton English, Francisco Ramos make top 5?

Before we get into talking the comics that performed on “Last Comic Standing” last night, we do have to spend a moment discussing the DRASTIC format change from last year. Maybe it’s a budget or a time thing, since it certainly feels much more cost-effective to do a head-to-head round than a challenge round like last year. Also, there’s not much time before the fall season begins. It’s just a bummer that this part of the competition is gone, even if we did laugh very much over some of the battles that took plus. (Also, Anthony Jeselnik tearing apart Roseanne and Norm was a thing of beauty.)

Michael Palascak defeats Taylor Tomlinson – A really fun battle. Michael was stronger as a whole, mostly just because we felt more like we were completely at his mercy a little more and he structured his set really well. This was the best we’ve seen Taylor, but she still is relatively new at comedy and she has more room to grow. If she wants someone to look toward, Amy Schumer was someone who was early on in her career when she appeared here.

Ian Bagg defeats Francisco Ramos – We actually think that both were better than either of the first two comics, which is why we find this structure somewhat of a bummer. Francisco’s jokes about the shower were hysterical, but we get what the judges were saying about Ian being funny. He was so relaxed on stage, and yet he completely CRUSHED it. One of the best performances that we’ve seen this season, even if it was a little edgy and far from politically correct.

Dominique defeats Sheng Wang – On the flip side, we actually think that Ian and Francisco were both better than either of these two. We did enjoy Dominique’s funeral set (funny to even write that) more than we’ve enjoyed her stuff in the past, and that was probably enough for her to topple Sheng, who took a while before getting to his fun stuff about his New York City landlord.

Andy Erickson defeats Ryan Conner – Once again, we feel for Francisco here, since we liked him more than either of these two. We actually feel like neither was particularly strong; Andy felt a little bit dated with some of her jokes, but we did at least have more consistent laughs than Ryan. We actually thought that his series of jokes about his name and his mom finding him on the internet were funny, but he needed to end it after about a minute or so and run into some other stuff.

Clayton English defeats Joe List – To us, Clayton’s body of work so far is really so strong that he almost deserved his spot by default. We didn’t find anything he did this week to be as hilarious as what we did in the past, but there were some really good moments here and there about cereal and million-dollar cars that made him funnier tonight than Joe. He just also has that incredible charisma on stage that keeps him as the favorite to win this season in our mind.