I am – Hercules!!

The new TV Guide, apparently, comes with a feature interviewing the “Last Comic Standing” housemates. Here’s “Son of Fett” with a paranoid theory:

I noticed in the TV Guide for next week that they talk to some of the Last Comic Standing People about jokes or something. Anyway, Jay London is missing. This might mean he could be gone tonight.

Who, one wonders, can beat Jay London?

“Last Comic Standing” was NBC’s highest-rated show last week, and remains such a powerful franchise that the net just ordered a third season to run in the fall.

With last week’s Jay London roast we got the best immunity challenge we’ve yet seen on the show. All the contestants were forced to crank out a few minutes of new material, and for me it precipitated real rooting interest. No one, I’m guessing, was much surprised that Ant and Tammy Pescatelli choked, as they seem to repeat the same watery material incessantly, and neither has proven particularly witty offstage. More surprising was how poorly normally solid stage performers like Cory Holcomb, Kathleen Madigan and especially Gary Gulman fared. Alonzo Bodden, on the other hand, got off at least one decent joke with “A wise man, a peaceful man, quite possibly a Cro-Magnon man,” and used his well-honed deadpan to win the votes of the celebrity panel.

But for my money the real revelation was John Heffron, who generated loads of great new material, most memorably his hilarious crack about London’s fear of ice. He’s now the guy to watch.

Tuesday. 9 p.m. NBC.

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