Last Comic Standing 4 debuts tonight

Last Comic Standing 4 »   
by Andy Dehnart / May 30, 2006, 8:26 AM

After a disastrous third season that led to the series losing its critical host, Last Comic Standing returns tonight four a fourth season at 8 p.m. ET.

Anthony Clark hosts the show, which will also feature a parallel online competition. He promises that the contestants are “all new. America does not know about these people. None of them are open-mikers. They’ve all done it for four or five years, going through the comedy-club circuit all over America. But no one in the final five is a household name by any means. But they’re really, really funny,” he tells the Boston Herald.

But Scripps-Howard points out that “for every unknown in the contest, ‘Comics’ unjustly lets established talent into the competition.” Among those people are a GSN host, Bil Dwyer; Skippy from Family Ties, Marc Price; and Theo Vaughn, who’s apparently trying to break through his career as a Road Rules and Challenge cast member.