Dat Is Da "Last Comic Standing"

Poor Dung Thi Ho--now that son Dat Phan's got an NBC development deal and a Comedy Central special of his very own, he can take his "my-crazy-Asian-American mother" jokes to a whole new level.

With 35 percent of the vote, Phan of San Diego was named the "Funniest Person in America" by viewers of NBC's Last Comic Standing, the summer reality talent competition hosted by Jay Mohr.

To take the trophy (or the development deal and comedy special, as the case may be) at the Paris Hotel theater in Las Vegas, Phan beat out superpower Ralphie May of Houston (28 percent), Rich "The Don" Vos of Plainfield, New Jersey (18 percent), red-hot mama Cory Kahaney of New York City (12 percent) and sexy Tess Drake of Sandusky, Ohio (7 percent).

With the deciding votes already submitted by phone and email, the two-hour finale was more of a house reunion and lovefest than fierce comic street fight.

During the first hour Mohr lobbed softball questions at the 10 finalists, NBC stalled with a series of recap clips, and urban cowboy Sean Kent of Austin, Texas, cast a pall over the evening with the revelation that his cancer had returned. Hour two consisted of more recap clips (this time specifically devoted to the five remaining finalists); the summary dismissal of Drake, Kahaney and Vos; and the resurrection of that Who Wants to Be a Millionaire "dramatic tension" music.

The biggest excitement before the final announcement was Mohr's dramatic pause during his announcement of Kahaney's elimination. Awkward sentence construction and a too-long pause led the cameraman, the spotlight guy and the audience to believe that it was Vos who had been sent away, and his gracious acceptance at losing and Kahaney's joy at surviving quickly turned to awkward embarassment when Mohr revealed that, nope, Kahaney who was supposed to go, and Vos who was supposed to stay. (At least until after the commercial break, when Vos, too, was eliminated.)

Phan's victory, improbable given the forces arrayed against him--and by forces we mean the cynical East Coast "Coalition"--came after two successful head-to-head battles with other finalists and an immunity victory earned in a TV pitch session.

Phan's earnest, can-do attitude never meshed with the hard-bitten likes of veterans May, Kahaney, Vos and Dave Mordal, a native of Elk River, Minnesota, and former Marine. The four formed the so-called "Coalition," and once they'd vanquished "punk-ass bitch" Kent (don't ever, ever insult Cory's cooking!) and albino porcupine impersonator Tere Joyce of Fresno, California, they turned on Phan. But Phan undermined their plot by winning immunity protection in the pitch competition, eliminating Mordal in a head-to-head shocker and, finally, taking out "sleeping dragon" Geoff Brown of Chicago.

Unswayed by the more free-wheeling attitudes of his housemates, Phan stuck to his comedy regimen and rode it to victory. Future Last Comics may wish to take note of Phan's training techniques, which include giving himself pep talks in his parents' voices, practicing kung-fu moves on hapless patio furniture and creating elaborate charts and statistical tables of his comedy routines, including average laughs per minute at every show he's ever done (that's 1,079 shows, in case you were wondering)--with decimals carried to five places. Vos' thoughts on this practice? "He's out of his mind. IBM doesn't have charts like this."

The numbers for Last Comic have been solid, if not spectacular, throughout the summer. According to the Nielsen overnights, the Last Comic finale averaged 8.2 million viewers to win its time slot (final figures are due out later Wednesday). For its nine-week summer run, Last Comic averaged about 8.3 million viewers and last week's penultimate installment ranked 19th among total viewers, with 8.5 million. (Unlike Dat Phan, Nielsen Media Research does not report average laughs per minute.)

Still, an NBC spokesperson says there's no decision yet about whether Last Comic might return for a second season.

And while the future of Last Comic Standing is unclear, the finalists (professional comics all) already have performance dates scheduled well into the foreseeable future. Phan appears on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno on August 6, and Mordal rolls into Comedy Central's Tough Crowd with Colin Quinn on August 7. Vos and Kahaney are sharing the stage at the Improv at Harveys Cabaret in Lake Tahoe, Nevada, beginning August 12; Rob Cantrell (of Washington, D.C.) is at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco on August 13; Drake appears at Arkansas Tech University in Russellville, Arkansas, on August 18; and Last Comic champ Phan is back onstage at the Improv in Tempe, Arizona, for four days beginning August 21.

Mohr next appears in the romantic feature Seeing Other People, alongside Lauren Graham, Josh Charles and Andy Richter. No word yet on whether the Last Comic Standing producers, including Mohr, might also produce Phan's TV pilot.