Tough Crowd with Colin Quinn

From Freepedia

Tough Crowd with Colin Quinn was a talk show on Comedy Central. It aired weeknights at 11:30 PM ET, immediately following The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. It debuted in 2003, and was put on an "indefinite hiatus" in October 2004, with what was presumably its final episode airing on November 4th of that year.

The show featured Colin Quinn and four other comedian guests discussing current events and issues. the emphasis was on the comedy and the debates were never settled. The show opened with a monologue by Quinn; after the opening credits, the debates happened throughout most of the show. Near the end there was usually a sketch of some sort, followed by each of the four guests doing a brief monologue on a particular topic that was discussed earlier in the episode (the comedians prepare these monologues ahead of time).

Regular guests were Patrice O'Neal, Nick DiPaolo, Jim Norton, Keith Robinson, Rich Vos, and Greg Giraldo. Other frequent guests included Marc Maron, Judy Gold, Robert Kelly, Dave Attell, Jim David, Laurie Kilmartin, Dom Irrera, Kevin Hart, and Sherrod Small. Also, legendary comic George Carlin made an appearance as well. The guests on the final show were O'Neal, DiPaolo, Norton, Giraldo, and Keith Robinson.

It was frequently criticized for being low brow, racist, sexist, and so forth, often by panelists on the show itself.

There were times when the comics would begin shouting at each other at the expense of being funny, but the panelists over time avoided this for the most part.

Jim Norton discussed the ending of the show on his blog, where he said that Comedy Central would send down notes to the show to stop being political or racial, because they already had shows that dealt with those topics (probably meaning The Daily Show and Chappelle's Show), or that the show did not fit with Comedy Central's image it wanted to have. Near the end of the show, a website was started to try to save it. This website was created by the folks who run cringehumor.net, a New York City based comedian discussion website/blog/forum.

The last show contained emotional monologues by Quinn, who attacked his detractors (such as the New York Times) as being hypocritical and elitist for their negative reviews. He also attempted to define "comedic integrity" as the ability to critique the hypocrisy of society, but to be real enough to admit that you are as guilty of it as anyone else. The implication was that many political comedians spend all their time criticizing society and others, but rarely themselves.

There were many rumours about what might replace TC, such as a Daily Show style show about Hollywood, featuring Greg Giraldo. Most of these didn't come true except for the 'double header' Daily Show which is used from time to time as filler by Comedy Central. The rumored hollywood show turned out to be the "Showbiz Show", showing up a year or more after cancellation, actually starred David Spade rather than Giraldo.

Epilogue, August 2005.

Comedy Central's "racial" show went off the air when Dave Chapelle became unhappy with the direction it was taking, took his several million dollars, and split to South Africa/Ohio. Comedy Central has had other shows that use some of the same elements of Tough Crowd but don't have the staying power. 'Mind of Mencia', for example, features over the top host shouting about the silliness of race and racism in America, including 'man on the street' interviews. 'Weekends at the DL' tries to talk about race and racism and has guest 'round tables', with some of the same people who used to be on Tough Crowd, like Lewis Black.

External links

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