Tuesday, September 20, 2011

The Charlie Sheen Roast was OK

Sure, every Comedy Central Roast is made up of 70% nobodies/non-comedians, but I feel like last night's roast of Charlie Sheen was probably around 90%.  The "big names" like Steve-O, Mike Tyson, Jon Lovitz, and William Shatner were all lackluster.  Tyson's writers provided some good laughs, but ultimately he couldn't shut up and interrupted too much.  Props to the dais for largely ignoring him, or using his Tourette's against him.  Steve-O was probably the worst roaster of the night, and his best joke was running into Iron Mike's fist.  However, he was infinitely better than The Situation on last year's  Donald Trump Roast, who still holds the distinction as worst roaster in the history of ever, period.  Shatner wasn't bad, but wasn't great either.  Lovitz was more creepy than anything.  Patrice O'Neal was a disappointment, and Kate Walsh was a surprise.
Of course, there were still some hilarious jokes from the roasters, and roastmaster Seth McFarlane.  McFarlane was a great host, and delivered some of the best jokes of the night as well as being the punchline on several other jokes.  Jeff Ross, dressed as Gaddafi, has my vote as best roaster of the night, an honor I usually delegated to the late Greg Giraldo (an exception being Norm MacDonald in the Bob Saget Roast).  A lot of people are praising Amy Shumer, but overall I thought she was good not great.  Ditto for Anthony Jeselnik.  Sheen himself was pretty good, but I feel like he could have said more.
Overall, I felt like the dais was a little shorthanded, but looking back it had the same number of roasters as previous roasts.  It definitely lacked stars closer to Charlie; Lovitz, Shatner, and Tyson were probably the only ones that actually knew him, though none struck me as being good friends wit him.  There was no Larry King and Marlee Matlin (Trump), no Pam Anderson and Hulk Hogan (Hasselhoff), and no Carl Reiner and Tom Arnold (Joan Rivers).  I feel like the runtime was shorter, and the lack of taped sketches/segments by comedians was surprising and severely lacking.  Yet despite everything I just said, the Comedy Central Roast of Charlie Sheen was the most watched of all 11 roasts.  Go figure.

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