NBC (Tuesdays, 9 p.m. ET)
REALITY
The fourth-season audition rounds of this national search for a fresh stand-up star raise a question: If we're expected to laugh at the would-be, weirded-out comics who bomb, doesn't that make them funny? Luckily, in the two-hour premiere (May 30, 8 p.m. ET), there's only one guy who lapses into cringe-inducing pathos. He talks in a piping voice, like an enchanted teakettle in a Disney cartoon, and eventually lies down in a semi-fetal position. (He may just be putting us on.) None of the comedians are great, but the best ones arrive onstage with a hardened look of endless work and accumulated failures—the honorable desperation of the comic.
[STARS 2]
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