after watching the first episode i was excited.

after watching the second episode i was suspicious.

after watching the third episode i was certain.

and, after watching the fourth episode they admitted it.

the show i'm talking about is last comic standing. the trespass the show made is that the whole damn 'reality-based' competition is 100% rigged.

the show's premise has comics compete against one another to win a spot into some house in hollywood. once they are in the house i don't know what happens but with whatever happens, whoever is the last comic standing wins some tv contract or something of the like. to start out there are about a trillion of them and they are whittled down to 40 and then 20 and then 10.

in the last round of judging (to get the crop down to 10) nbc delivered 3 big names (drew carey, brett butler, anthony clark) and some super annoying woman to decide who the funniest of them were and consequently who moves forward in the competition. so the comics do their thing and then the judges do their thing and then the winners are announced. this is where it gets all sticky because the winners were, problematically, not who the celebrity panel voted on.

drew carey, brett butler and some of the comics freak out wondering what the hell happened. ultimately a producer comes down and explains that in addition to the celebrity panel there are nbc producers and executives also voting. put aside the fact that the producers and executives most likely don't know as much about comedy as the professional comics. also put aside the fact that the producers and executives votes seemed to totally nullify the professional comics votes. put aside the fact that the pros were there for nothing other than their name recognition. and putting all those things aside leaves you with a really screwed up handjob.

fact is, the network most likely knew who they wanted in the house right after the initial crop were selected. i mean this one comic received a standing ovation by the 1100 people in the forum, including the judges, yet was told to go home because he just didn't seem to have what it took. but the not-funny, yet oddly attractive sicilian woman sure did and was asked to move forward.

and i think that it was this dicked comic, dan nauterman, who put it best when he said ...

i don't want to have anything more to do with this f*cking show.

ok, so he may have said stupid show but not only would he have been completely justified to say the harsher version, he should have said the harsher version, twice, and with hand gestures and groin-grabs included.

how can someone ruin a competition involving a whole heap of comedians saying funny stuff. i mean how can you possibly mess that up?