This show is basically a ripoff of the Japanese series Documental except it's terrible and Mexican.
If you're unfamiliar with the source material that this was sloppily cribbed from, 10 "comedians" pool their money and are locked in a room for 6 hours trying to make each other laugh. Smiles earn yellow cards, bigger offenses award red cards and result in expulsion from the game. The last one standing gets all of the pooled money as a prize (incidentally, wouldn't that be "last one not laughing?")
It's a setup that works wonderfully for Documental, where long-form bits and callbacks build on themselves for hours and gamified rules cultivate interesting play. In between bits that bring many viewers to tears of laughter, an unhinged sort of tension builds between the competing comics until one or more break.
Anyway, I don't know if it's a cultural thing, a group of bad improvisers and poorly matched comedians, showrunners that don't really understand the formula, or all of the above, but this show is terrible. Using the same formula that Documental leverages to create comedic gold, LOL somehow manages to be actively unfunny. The comedians' bits fall flat, their props and characters have the creativity and flair of an audience member's contributions to an improve troupe, and nothing has the time or merit to breathe or build on itself. Several contestants are also actively unlikable in addition to being unequivocally unfunny.
Few contestants seem to find anything that they collectively put forth to be funny, either, resulting in a conversational environment devoid of tension. The host tries gamely to seem interested or interesting, propping up his contestants by erupting in faked laughter at feeble bits or doing his own riffs in the back room he views the "action" from. To his credit, he keeps the game moving along despite the complete absence of humor or inherent momentum. Unfortunately, that often requires him to scan for errant smiles and hand out infractions like an HOA Karen checking her neighbors paint against a list of approved swatches. I do wonder on some level if maybe something passably funny could have taken shape without his hawkish interruptions, but frankly I doubt it.
This is a bad show. It's not even "so bad it's funny in unintended ways" bad, it's just bad.
If you're unfamiliar with the source material that this was sloppily cribbed from, 10 "comedians" pool their money and are locked in a room for 6 hours trying to make each other laugh. Smiles earn yellow cards, bigger offenses award red cards and result in expulsion from the game. The last one standing gets all of the pooled money as a prize (incidentally, wouldn't that be "last one not laughing?")
It's a setup that works wonderfully for Documental, where long-form bits and callbacks build on themselves for hours and gamified rules cultivate interesting play. In between bits that bring many viewers to tears of laughter, an unhinged sort of tension builds between the competing comics until one or more break.
Anyway, I don't know if it's a cultural thing, a group of bad improvisers and poorly matched comedians, showrunners that don't really understand the formula, or all of the above, but this show is terrible. Using the same formula that Documental leverages to create comedic gold, LOL somehow manages to be actively unfunny. The comedians' bits fall flat, their props and characters have the creativity and flair of an audience member's contributions to an improve troupe, and nothing has the time or merit to breathe or build on itself. Several contestants are also actively unlikable in addition to being unequivocally unfunny.
Few contestants seem to find anything that they collectively put forth to be funny, either, resulting in a conversational environment devoid of tension. The host tries gamely to seem interested or interesting, propping up his contestants by erupting in faked laughter at feeble bits or doing his own riffs in the back room he views the "action" from. To his credit, he keeps the game moving along despite the complete absence of humor or inherent momentum. Unfortunately, that often requires him to scan for errant smiles and hand out infractions like an HOA Karen checking her neighbors paint against a list of approved swatches. I do wonder on some level if maybe something passably funny could have taken shape without his hawkish interruptions, but frankly I doubt it.
This is a bad show. It's not even "so bad it's funny in unintended ways" bad, it's just bad.