Is it comedy or reality?
NBC's 'Last Comic Standing' only sort of real
I'm stunned. Aren't you?
Sarcasm aside (for a moment), Drew Carey and Brett Butler were certainly unpleasantly surprised by what happened when they served as celebrity judges for the new edition of NBC's "Last Comic Standing," which premieres tonight at 7 p.m. on Ch. 5.
And neither Carey nor Butler made any secret of their unhappiness. Carey called the show "crooked and dishonest" in an interview with the Hollywood Reporter.
And Butler posted a statement on her Web site disavowing the results of the show — "We had NOTHING to do with them."
Well, maybe not "nothing." As we see in the four hours (really!) of the show that airs tonight and Wednesday, comedy talent scouts Bob Read and Ross Mark (who book comedians for "The Tonight Show") went to auditions at various sites around the country and sent a group of comics on to the next round in Las Vegas. There, the judging was "a combination of the celebrity talent scouts that were there in consultation with the producers," said an NBC spokeswoman.
Apparently, however, nobody told the celebrities that their input wasn't what would decide the competition. At least according to Read.
Executive producer Peter Engel has apologized to the celebrities in the wake of Carey and Butler's rather public disavowal of the show. "Peter, I think, was professional and a good man and he stood up and said, 'Hey, I screwed up. I didn't tell them what to do there,' " Read said.
Which is all very nice, except that it doesn't address the issue at hand. Talent of any kind, let alone comedy talent, is subjective — but, rather obviously, Butler and Carey don't think the 10 finalists on "Last Comic Standing" are the 10 best comedians.
And other questions have been raised about the legitimacy of the competition. Another of the executive producers, Barry Katz, represents two of the 10 finalists, although NBC insists he recused himself from making any decisions about their participation. And it at least appears at times in the first four hours that comics who have a past relationship with Marks and Read have a leg up when it comes to advancing in the competition.
"Yes, we did represent some of the people in the past, but we also quit that job — being managers," Read said. "And there was also no rule against people that we may have worked with before or booked on any kind of shows or anything like that."
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