Ten funny Canadians, some of them quite famous even here in the United States, agree to sequester together on a makeshift talk-show set to raise money for their favorite charities with a catch. Only one of them will win money for their cause. And to do so, they’ll have to be the Last One Laughing. It’s the latest installment in a growing global brand for Amazon Prime Video.
Opening Shot: The opening credits roll immediately as if it’s a red-carpet event, with an announcer calling out the names of the performers and our host, Jay Baruchel, who then makes a grand entrance onto a late-night talk show set, complete with desk, chairs and a full band.
The Gist: Amazon Prime Video already has established the LOL: Last One Laughing Brand in Mexico, Australia (see my review from 2020), Italy, Germany, India, France, and Spain, all based off a Japanese game show, Documental, which launched in 2016. Each version follows a similar format. Ten comedians. One room. Trying not to laugh, while making the others laugh. The “Last One Laughing” after six hours wins $100,000 for their selected charity.
Compared to all of the other editions, the Canadian season certainly brings to the table more established comedians who even casual American TV viewers would recognize.
Canada’s 10 competitors include Caroline Rhea (Sabrina the Teenage Witch), Dave Foley (The Kids in the Hall), Colin Mochrie (Whose Line Is It Anyway?), Tom Green (Freddy Got Fingered), Mae Martin (Feel Good), Andrew Phung (Kim’s Convenience), K. Trevor Wilson (Letterkenny), Jon Lajoie (The League), plus veteran stand-up Debra DiGiovanni (Last Comic Standing) and relative newcomer Brandon Ash-Mohammed.
As each of the contestants arrives on set, it’s staged as if none of them have any idea who else is participating in this stunt. Phung, first to arrive, confesses “I’m terrible at keeping a straight face.” The production plays up the ridiculousness of the conceit as everyone else shows up, each of them claiming they won’t last long before cracking by cracking up. “Seeing Colin Mochrie, already, I was like, I’m done,” says Lajoie. “If I have a strategy, it’ll be to be unconscious.” But once all 10 have arrived, Baruchel shows up to greet the comedy collective and spell out the rules of the game, with two different time-in and time-out sounds and lights, as well as a yellow-card warning followed by a red-card to kick a comedian out of the room and the competition. Fully half of the first episode merely sets the stage for the competition.
At minute 26 of the episode (or 21 minutes into the 6-hour competition), the first yellow cards get handed out for smiling too big and chortling just a bit too much. Green launches into a prepared bit, delivering a classic stand-up monologue from the talk-show set, complete with index cards and a slight Johnny Carson impersonation. “It’s so funny because he’s so committed to it,” Lajoie said.
But would it succeed in forcing laughs out of his competitors, though?
The first two episodes dropped at launch, with episodes three and four coming Feb. 25, 2022, and episodes five and six completing the season on March 4.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of?: If you haven’t watched LOL: Last One Laughing Australia, then think of Celebrity Big Brother, only there’s no head of household and the only way to have immunity is not to laugh. It’s really that simple.
Our Take: Even a hardened comedy critic can see why this show format has translated so successfully across so many countries for Prime Video. You cannot go wrong by putting 10 funny people together in a room and instructing them NOT to laugh. It’s reverse psychology in action. And despite Baruchel jokingly comparing it to the infamous Stanford Prison Experiment, the LOL contest never feels like torture and won’t incur any post-traumatic stress on any of the comedians, or us viewers.
At only about a half-hour each, it’s almost impossible not to keep going after the first episode. Episode 2 even launches with a warning: “The following episode contains scenes of extreme idiocy, public urination, and literal shit-talk. Viewer discretion is advised.” I won’t spoil anything by telling you who partakes in those forewarned activities, but I will say a truly Canadian touch comes when two comedians get sent to a makeshift “penalty box” for two minutes (because you cannot do Canada without a hockey reference), where they’re forced to sit and take verbal and visual abuse from their fellow competitors.
Sex and Skin: Not much, but there’s a surprising amount of bare ass in the second episode from an even more surprising source.
Parting Shot: The premiere ends on a cliffhanger red-light double infraction, followed by a highlight reel teasing antics in the episodes to come.
Sleeper Star: The amount of reverence the other comedians have for Tom Green should make you stop and reconsider everything you thought about him. “I defy anyone to get that close to Tom Green and not laugh,” Martin says.
Our Call: STREAM IT. With this group, it’s really easy to imagine yourself trapped in that room and wonder if you could last even a few minutes without bursting into laughs yourself.
Sean L. McCarthy works the comedy beat for his own digital newspaper, The Comic’s Comic; before that, for actual newspapers. Based in NYC but will travel anywhere for the scoop: Ice cream or news. He also tweets @thecomicscomic and podcasts half-hour episodes with comedians revealing origin stories: The Comic’s Comic Presents Last Things First.
