It was Thursday night, but I only got the chance to watch the recorded version last night.
What an awful, awful presentation. Of the 90 minutes, I would guess that fully 2/3 of the show was dedicated to pushing NBC's Olympics coverage - the contestants entering in Olympic tracksuits, the commercial bumpers, and even Bill Bellamy saying towards the end, "Give it up for the Olympics!"
When the Olympics weren't being pushed, there were decent segments featuring Joel McHale, Jon Reep (last year's winner) and Triumph the Insult Comic Dog, but we were also subject to a routine from Jon Lovitz, which was painfully unfunny and didn't really seem to fit in.
The competition itself was an afterthought to NBC - instead of having the five remaining comics perform, they just got picked off periodically until the final two were thankfully allowed to do a routine.
Oh yeah, Iliza won, and they congratulated her at the end of the show while the credits were rolling and we were asked to watch the Olympics.
I wanted to see it but I forgot to tape it. I went to a Testament, Motorhead, Heaven & Hell, and Judas Priest show. My first choice was for Sean Cullen. As he didn't make the finals, I was glad to hear that Iliza won.
I only caught 2 episodes before the last one and the 2nd to last one was heavily promoting that new dangerous job show. Between LCS and American Gladiators, I have noticed alot of cross promotions. On AG they had a Mummy ad taking up the bottom 3rd of the screen while Hogan was doing an interview.
I'm reasonably happy with Iliza winning--her final set wasn't great, but she really did well in the showdowns.
The Olympic stuff was mostly stupid. The track suits in particular looked ridiculous. The show wasn't all Olympic promotion, though--there was also some Deal Or No Deal promotion! Ack.
Jon Lovitz was terrible. No one was all that good. The only real laugh I got out of it was Triumph's line about how when Esther Ku and her laugh left LA, whales stopped beaching themselves. And even Triumph, when he was going on about how the previous LCS winners haven't amounted to much, missed the golden opportunity to mock Dat Phan.
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I think The Next Great American band is a solid premise and, theoretically, SHOULD be a better draw than American Idol. Unfortunately, Fox decided to give it the FRIDAY NIGHT TIMESLOT OF DEATH, which seals its fate.