Print this article E-mail this article More articles by this author

What Might Have Been

With two hours devoted to the competition of the Final Three, the producers had plenty of time for trips down Memory Lane. We saw several assortments of "best of the worst" of audition material. Bad drama can be funny, but bad comedy? Rarely funny. That's one of the ways you know it's bad. So "best of the worst" is a wasted concept on this show.

We also saw performances from some comics whom we'd seen audition, but who did not make it into the house. The first of these was Grandma Lee, an older woman who had auditioned in Tampa. She was a game old gal, but her delivery was stilted, and her material was about as old as she was. One of her jokes (about her grandson putting army guys into her coffee cup because "the best part of waking up is soldiers in your cup") I'd just received for the 97th time in an e-mail mailing.

When Jay Mohr announced the second performer, he referenced her "original voice." I had a moment of fear that this would be the return of Jessica Kirson, but I was delighted to find out that it was instead Marina Franklin, who'd auditioned in New York. Marina was one of my favorites from the audition rounds, and I enjoyed her again tonight. She doesn't have laugh-out-loud jokes, but she's got a sharp, observational humor, and I just enjoyed listening to her imitation of the preacher at the church her grandmother took her to, and her grandmother's commentary on his sermon. I think she has the potential to do some interesting one-woman shows, if she put her mind to that direction.

The third returnee was Jim Norton, who had been chosen by the producers as the sole representative of Tampa, but who had had to drop out the competition due to a scheduling conflict. I hadn't enjoyed Jim in the auditions; I found him bitter, scary, and distinctly unfunny. I was happy all over again that he didn't make it into the house after seeing his act tonight, which featured, for example, descriptions of how bad a date's breath was.

While I was happy to see Marina again, I'm pretty stunned at the other two comics who were invited back. In my first recap of the season, I said how surprised I was at who hadn't made it into the house -- and none of the people I referenced were invited back tonight. I suppose I could imagine the return of Jim Norton, since he's apparently popular with some viewers, and he had had to drop out of the audition. But Grandma Lee?

What Was, But Which We Didn't See

In addition to showing us more of people who didn't make it into the house, we also saw more of what happened in the house and on the challenges. For example, we saw more of the material at the Friars Roast challenge. Most of it was bland, but I did enjoy Alonzo's comment to Corey: "Corey Holcombe. My brother. Keeping it real. And living in Sherman Oaks. I don't know, Corey, are a lot of the Crips making it out to the Galleria?" Confirming that Alonzo really did deserve to win that challenge. And confirming once again that ANT deserved the boot, we were treated to ANT comparing himself to Paul Lynde. It's easy to imitate Paul Lynde, but it's like imitating Jackson Pollock -- getting the form doesn't mean you've mastered the spirit, and ANT fell far short.

For some reason, we were shown an in-depth featurette on Jay London -- his spirituality, his intelligence, his self-effacement. We were able to see him "smudging" his apartment and himself to remove bad energy. We were able to see him choose animal spirit guides. What I was not able to see was why Jay London was given this treatment. I mean, I love the guy too, but there's really something strange about how much attention he's gotten on the show.

After all, there were nine other comics in the house! I know that, because we saw footage from the house that we hadn't seen before. Last season, some of the best material of the show was the comics interacting with one another in the house. This year, we saw much less of that. While it could be that this group simply wasn't as funny hanging out together, some of the material we saw tonight made me wonder. Gary and Todd made up dreams to tell one another -- sounds like fun to me! Kathleen imitated Corey Holcombe -- there has to be a story behind that! John Heffron practiced martial arts on a mannequin -- it would have to be as good as Dat Phan beating up on a chair.

But I can only speculate, because we didn't see these elements during the course of the season, and the clips tonight were arranged in loose groupings of "pet peeves" or "imitations" or "romances in the house." (On that last point -- no, we didn't miss much during the season. Jay London had a bit of a crush on Tammy; ANT had a crush on Jay; and Gary had a "man-crush" on Todd.)

Finally, What Will Be

After an hour, we finally moved on to the actual competition of the last three contestants. And about time, because I had taken to remarking to the television that "this is death."

"THANK you."

(The key to the perfect Jay London "thank you" is that heavy, heavy emphasis on the word "thank." I had plenty of chance to discover that during the course of the first hour.)

Alonzo Bodden

Alonzo's act tonight focused on women -- the dangers of dating them, the difficulties in finding one to sleep with, the perils of shopping with them. Relationships between men and women have been a fruitful territory for comics for as long as ... well, probably for as long as there's been comics. But its very reliability as a source for material makes it tricky to find a fresh, new angle, and Alonzo's set came out sounding tired.

There was some fun material, such as being nervous about having sex with a woman who has a big dog. ("You want her to enjoy it, but you don't want her to scream.") But jokes about having to sit in The Chair and hold a woman's purse while she's shopping just fell flat.

Alonzo's set came out okay, but disappointing. I had expected more from Alonzo than an autopilot set. Maybe he felt like he needed to appeal to the widest possible audience, but I think he would have been better served by something less generic.

Gary Gulman

Gary was second, and came out wearing an absolutely horrible suit. I guess they must have made him dress up for the finals, but gee whiz, the red t-shirt did so much more for him than this outfit.

Tonight's set was, for Gary, a fairly standard set. Heavy on the ironic observation -- asking an Olympic figure skater why she fell leads to the answer "because it's so darn slippery ... it's like a sheet of ice out there!"

I thought his opening riff, about his father being fifty when he was born and about the embarrassment that caused him at school (when the school asked who was president when his father was young, Gary had to say "Julius Caesar"), was weak. On the other hand -- and I have no good explanation for that -- I guffawed loudly at his cookie humor this week, which focused on the expansion of Fig Newtons from figs to other forms of fruit. Gary imitated a new boss coming in and telling the workers, "Anything we can grind up and shove inside a Newton, let's do it!" When one of the workers asked about cranberry-kiwi, the new boss replied, "Hell yeah, cranberry-kiwi. I said 'anything,' damn it! I'll shove you in there if I think that's going to move product!"

While Gary's set was more original than Alonzo's, I thought that it was also a weak representation of his work. Maybe the comics were advised to go generic?

John Heffron

John Heffron, like Alonzo, relied on male-female relations for most of his material. But while Alonzo approached the topic as a single man, John approached it as a married man. He talked about his wife taking both sides of an argument ("Hey, ladies? If us guys don't need to be there for the argument, if you're capable of having that little discussion without us, by all means, have that fight on your way home from work."), and about the little codes from his wife around the house (towels left on a step means to take the towels upstairs; garbage by the door means the garbage should be taken outside).

This was actually John's most serious, grown-up performance, and I'm impressed that he brought a change in style for this last competition, considering his hyper style carried him through two head-to-head competitions. Of all three of the comics, he was the best served in showing that he could go generic.

But I still thought his joke last week about women being like Marines -- five women go into a bar, five women come out! -- was funnier.

Final Comments: Solid "B" material from everyone tonight. Unfortunately, I'd really been hoping for "A" game tonight.

It's tough to call the voting. Gary's gained a lot of good will in the house, and I think he's been the strongest of these three in having consistent sets in competition. But Alonzo's got that indefinable something that came out at the Friars Club and showed that he has great comedic writing skills. And I don't think you can count out John Heffron, who was the only one of the three to show something new stylistically tonight. My vote would be for Gary, but I can actually see any of these three men winning the prize.

We'll find out who wins, on Thursday, August 12, 9 p.m. Eastern time, on NBC!

More Resources on the Internet: NBC.com's Official Site | SirLinksalot.net

Post your comments at The-Trades.com