July 11, 2010 · 2:05 PM

Exploring the NBC talent paradox

By Rick Lax

The state of the entertainment union...has been stronger in years past.

It’s official: America’s out of talent. Everybody has been discovered.

If memory serves, during the first few seasons of America’s Got Talent, the judges put through the good acts and cut the bad ones.

Now the show is 95% sob story, 5% talent. It’s turned into The Gong Show for the ill.

Oh, I know the producers and the judges have the best of intentions when they allow forward, say, the septuagenarian quadriplegic hippo caller. But the show comes off as a patronizing, unsettling, talent show of the grotesque. Like something you’d see in Rocky Horror 2.

Here’s what I can’t figure out: How is it that as the contestants on America’s Got Talent get worse and worse, the contestants on Last Comic Standing get funnier and funnier?

Discussion:

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