Aspiring comics speak up for the down-and-outs

REMS. Witty and insightful observations.

We’re glad that “It’s Showtime” is currently holding its daily search for new comedians, titled “The Funny One,” because it’s providing us with a handy reference guide to what Filipinos find funny these days.

As per the daily and weekly outcomes of the competition, the most popular “sequentially surviving” finalists (they’re now down to eight from an original 10) are those who have their fingers on the pulse of daily life and the travails of ordinary people. More specifically, the acts that get the best and loudest reactions are the self-appointed “representatives” of street-smart survivors in the Big City.

Most pertinently of all, they tend to speak up for the down-and-outs on the wrong side of the law, and for the durugista denizens in the underbelly of the metro!

Obvious preference

Adding to this obvious preference is the fact that the finalists are judged for the most part by a panel of 51 similarly “street-smart” jurors, including some self-admitted tambays.

Pop psychologists can have a field day analyzing why local humor has painted itself into this “knowing” corner. Are there really that many “addicts” of all sorts in both polite and impolite society these days? Or, is it just “trendy” to pretend to be “happy to be high,” just to keep up with the nefarious neighbors?

To be sure, some finalists prefer to come up with more “traditionally” funny material. But, it’s so old-hat that it shouldn’t be encouraged, either!

More on the up-and-up, a few finalists come up with witty or insightful observations about Filipinos’ behavior or psyche.

They, including frontrunner Ryan Rems, tend to be of the mordant or “grumpily unhappy” sort, reminding us of a celebrated American comic who made his mark, not with bright and smart punchlines, but with downbeat one-liners about people’s more nihilistic tendencies and proclivities. —To find the same vein being mined locally is a (similarly mordant) surprise, to say the least!

Unfair advantage?

Another hopefully relevant note: Thus far, all of the duos and trios in the original field of 10 finalists have survived.

Is this a sign that they have a built-in and unfair advantage? If so, future stagings of the comedy tilt should feature only solo contestants.

While we’re at it, we should also comment on the current tilt’s celebrity jurors, whose participation to date has been less than wonderfully helpful. Shouldn’t they give the new comics better and funnier role models to emulate?

At noon today, the comedy tilt’s “losers” this past week will compete in a “second chance” squareoff, and the field of survivors will be further cut down to six. If all the “group acts” will continue to prosper—the handwriting is on the wall!