Tonight’s episode of last comic standing was a good start to the season – clearing out some of the ‘comedic dead wood.’

The Immunity challenge was a brutal one. The comics were each asked to try to perform while they took turns heckling one another. Anyone who has ever taken the stage to do comedy knows that 90% of what all comics do up there is carefully scripted. It may look spontaneous, but that is just a carefully crafted and intentional illusion which is part of their act. And few things can derail your act like an aggressive heckler.

Normally the comedian has the upper hand simply because they have a microphone, but when your heckler is another comedian, things can and did get pretty intense. While heckling another comic might be fun, few people had a tougher go of it than Chris Porter, whose job was to heckle Josh Blue – a comedian with cerebral palsy.

When bashing a heckler, you have to walk a fine line between intimidating them into shutting the hell up while not crossing the line and appearing so hostile that the rest of the audience winds up turning against you. Nothing like targeting someone with an obvious physical disability…

Chris wound up being absolutely fearless and let ‘er rip – his best line was arguably comparing Josh’s scraggly goatee to another dangly part of the male anatomy that has lots of small hairs conveniently concentrated… and although Chris didn’t win for heckling he did win immunity for the best comedic performance.

The worst/best heckler by far had to be Roz. It wasn’t so much that she was extremely funny as that she was just plain brutal. You would have had to have had your microphone hooked up to one of those giant speakers at a Metallica concert in order to get a word in. She just rolled her comic opponent over like a steam roller, leaving a comic shaped pancake on the stage…

The end of the show standoff came down to a 3 way ‘comedic high noon.’ Stella, the irritating pregnant lady whose makeup was ‘sponsored by Crayola’ was an easy bet for getting picked off. No psychic powers required there. She chose to start off with a homophobic joke, and while I’m not very ‘politically correct’ myself, she took so long with her gay bashing setup that by the time that she gave birth to her lukewarm punch line it wound up coming out stillborn. To call it a bomb would be an insult to bombing.

April Macie, while far from the funniest comic of the show was easily the funniest comic of the 3. Problem was, she didn’t use strong enough material and weaker/older comedian Michele Balan turned in a stronger than usual comedic set and wound up sneaking across the finish line ahead of the other two comedians by a nose.

All in all it was a good first round. Stella was just plain painful to watch – on or off the stage. Goodbye and good riddance. And as April was never likely to make it to the final rounds we didn’t lose anyone truly memorable before their time.

I’m going to withhold my predictions for a winner, but next week I’m planning on coming out with my picks for ‘final 4.’

So, who are you cheering for?