Seattle International Comedy Competition

Fitting that the final night of the final week of the 33rd Annual Seattle International Comedy Competition brings our five finalists back to the Comedy Underground in Seattle, where, in front of a packed house, our month long endeavor would conclude with the crowning of a new champion.

A comedy club is a very different thing than a big theater–the crowd is right on top of you, ready to interact with you (whether you want them to interact with you or not) and they’re not simply there to help you get the score that you need to push you up into the top spot for the week.  You’re going to have to work hard and earn those scores.

Joe Klocek certainly knows that.  He’s been through this a couple of times before.  The last time he took on the Seattle International Comedy Competition, in 2004, Joe made the finals and took 4th place over all.  In this year’s event, going into the last night, Joe was in…that’s right, 4th place.  Joe did NOT want to finish in 4th place this year.

Ahead of Joe in the weekly standings, going into this night, were Landry, Michael Malone and Tyrone Hawkins…and they all wanted to finish 1st for this year.  Joe would have to push past at least one of them if he was to not finish in 4th place.

Joe also had some urgency added into his situation–because immediately after tonight’s show, Joe would be racing to SeaTac airport for a flight taking him to China.  Hopefully he could rest on the plane because upon landing, he’d be driving four hours to do a show before he’d even get to check into his hotel!

Landry, no stranger to pressure situations as a previous winner of the Boston Comedy Festival and this year’s World Series of Comedy, would have his own challenge going into this night–he was going to be performing first.  He needed a big score while taking the bullet…while taking the “Go Up First Curse” head on.

Michael Malone, on the other hand, who suffered the Go Up First Curse the previous night at Bremerton’s Admiral Theatre (where he finished 3rd for the night, which dropped him from the top spot for the week into second place going into this last night of the competition), would be going up last–possibly a prime spot to get a good score…or, perhaps, falling into a dead zone where the crowd is tired out from a long show or too tipsy to control.

And Tyrone Hawkins, with two nightly wins in the four previous shows before this final night of the finals, held a slim lead over the field and was going up third–an excellent place to be.

The math was cruel to the fifth finalist and the only two-time champion of this event, Elliot Maxx–all he could do on this night would be to possibly play spoiler…

On this night, the show…as it has every night in this final week…and, truly, every night this entire competition…was strong, top to bottom.  The audience loved every performer and every performer earned their encore point.  It would be put into the hands of the judges and the cruelty of math.

On this night, the judges favored the pure material-based approach of San Francisco’s Joe Klocek…and earned the biggest scores of the night–by far.  He was the number one scored performer from four of the five judges (the fifth judge gave the night to Landry)…and that gave Joe Klocek his second nightly win of the week, matching Tyrone Hawkins in nightly wins.

The official nightly results for Night Five of the Finals Week of SICC-33 looked like this:

Finals Week-Night Five Nightly Top 5

1. Joe Klocek (San Francisco, CA)  
2. Landry (Atlanta, GA/Toronto, ON)
3. Michael Malone (Los Angeles, CA)
4. Tyrone Hawkins (Tacoma, WA)  
5. Elliot Maxx (Ballard, WA) 

…but what none of these performers knew at the time the Nightly Top 5 was announced was what their scores were…and how these scores, added to their previous scores, would impact the final standings for the competition.

Could Joe have scored high enough to push himself all the way from fourth to first?  Could Tyrone Hawkins hold on to first despite finishing fourth on this final night?  Michael Malone was closer to passing Tyrone than Landry or Joe, but Michael didn’t finish as high as either Landry or Joe…so, who won?

Without access to the math behind the final results, they might look a little strange…but all the math was triple checked and the equations all added up properly to give us the following results:

FINAL STANDINGS: L-R: Drew Barth (host), Michael Malone (1st), Elliot Maxx (5th), Landry (4th), Joe Klocek (2nd), Tyrone Hawkins (3rd)

Elliot Maxx took 5th place for the week–and he knew it too, not waiting to be called on stage as the 5th place finisher by our host Drew Barth…but just coming on stage on his own.

Landry had to be surprised to have finished 4th for the week–after all, he went into the night in third place…finished 2nd for the night…how could he have slipped back?  Well, the answer to that is simple–he was passed by Joe, who had been in 4th going into this last show…before taking the top spot for this last night of the finals, and his 2nd place finish did not give him a score to earn him a significant jump forward in the standings.

Tyrone Hawkins had gone into the night in first place for the week…but a fourth place finish on this final night earned him a new “drop score”–the lowest nightly score that a performer earns for a week is dropped from their weekly total.  That wasn’t surprising–he was one of three of the performers tonight whose score from tonight’s show was low enough to become their new drop score (only Landry and Joe Klocek actually improved their score with their score from the final show.)  Tyrone would have to settle for third place.

With a mad race to the airport and an international flight waiting for him, Joe Klocek had to find out if he’d made up enough ground from having won the final night to push all the way into taking the championship.  Unfortunately, while Joe could have and DID earn a score high enough to push himself past Landry and Tyrone Hawkins…even a nightly winning score would not be enough to push him past Michael Malone.  Still, second place is not fourth place…so Joe avoided repeating his finish from eight years ago.

Despite finishing third on the final night of finals…despite earning a score on this last night of the finals low enough to become his new “drop” score…and despite only snagging one nightly win, when both Joe and Tyrone had two each…the math showed that the consistently high scores of Los Angeles’ Michael Malone would be enough for him to be declared as the champion of the 33rd Annual Seattle International Comedy Competition.

After 22 shows over 25 nights at various venues in Western Washington, with hundreds of scores from scores of judges…it came down to this:  Michael Malone defeated Joe Klocek by 18 hundredths of a point.

(Michael was only half a point ahead of Tyrone and Landry.)

This only serves to illustrate how strong this year’s field was…how competitive this competition turned out to be.

And since we have a worthy, battle-tested new champion in Los Angeles’ Michael Malone…we can now close the book on an exciting year for the Seattle International Comedy Competition.

It’s over.

(Until we do it all again next year, of course…)

We bring the Seattle International Comedy Competition to Bremerton every year.  And ever year, it’s great–we play a great venue for a great crowd (mostly…there are always a couple of loud and obnoxious types that rear their heads, but never so many as to ruin the show or anything…) and it’s a great show.  And yet, almost every year in Bremerton, it gets a little weird when we announce the nightly order of finish for the show we just put on.  It doesn’t matter who the judges are or where they’re from…there’s just something about the Bremerton show that makes simply acknowledging those performers who the judges felt did their best on that night full of unexpected and inexpiable drama.

…and it kind of…sort of…happened again.

So, it was a Saturday night at the beautiful Admiral Theater in Bremerton.  This was the fourth of five shows in the final week of he 33rd Annual Seattle International Comedy Competition–and going into this show, the scores were astonishingly close.  Almost unfathomably close–with the difference between 1st place down to fourth pace being only some tenths…even hundredths of a point.  This show mattered–and all the performers knew it.

Michael Malone certainly knew it.  He would not only be taking on the Bremerton audience and his fellow competitors…but also the Go Up First Curse.  And Michael Malone took the fight right at everybody–it was perhaps one of the strongest and most consistent sets that anyone has had in this year’s competition.  He wanted to send a message…hell, he wanted to end the whole competition right then and there.

And maybe he did–but Joe Klocek, who followed Michael, certainly wasn’t just going to give up.  In fact, Joe came out and delivered haymaker after haymaker.  Only a stronger dismount gave Michael the advantage.

The third competitor of the night, Elliot Maxx, started out very strong, getting to one of his edgier songs far more quickly than he had at any time previous in this year’s competition.  Elliot’s set would go off on a few tangents from that point…but there were definitely big laughs throughout.

After an intermission, Tyrone Hawkins picked up the gauntlet that Michael had thrown down with his show opening set.  Tyrone owned that stage tonight…and the crowd loved it.

Closing out the show was Landry, who has been rock solid this entire competition…and he brought it, yet again, on this night.

When it came time to announce the order of finish…the crowd accepted that Elliot was in 5th place and that Joe was in 4th place (though Joe, who had locked his keys in his car earlier in the night, wasn’t there to accept his props on this night)…but when Michael Malone was announced in 3rd place, the crowd reacted strongly–in the way that only Bremerton audiences seem to…  There was a tidal wave like roar–some were cheering and some were booing–indicating that the audience did not necessarily agree with Michael not being higher in the order.

The odd thing was, the cheering for Landry in 2nd place…and then for Tyrone in 1st place for the night–was plenty loud.  They obviously liked Landry and Tyrone a lot–so, I’m not sure what the audience wanted…a three-way tie for first place, perhaps?

Producer Ron Reid and I exchanged exasperated looks…shrugged our shoulders and simply accepted the simple fact:  It’s Bremerton.  There’s nothing more that we could have done.

Here’s the order of finish, the way the judges saw things, for this night.

Finals Week-Night Four Nightly Top 5

1. Tyrone Hawkins (Tacoma, WA)  
2. Landry (Atlanta, GA/Toronto, ON)  
3. Michael Malone (Los Angeles, CA)
4. Joe Klocek (San Francisco, CA)
5. Elliot Maxx (Ballard, WA) 

Lost a little bit in the crowd’s reaction for Michael Malone was the fact that Tyrone Hawkins had an excellent set and earned his second nightly win for the week.  A very important factor when it comes to the close race to determine this year’s champion.

L-R: Tyrone Hawkins (SICC-33 Finals Week-Night Four Winner) and Drew Barth (host)

Despite being the only performer with two nightly wins this week, Tyrone does NOT have this competition wrapped up.  There is only a single point separating first place from fourth place in this week.  That means everything will depend on the fifth and final show of this final week of the 33rd Annual Seattle International Comedy Competition.  Someone will be crowned as the new champion of this event…and that someone will be crowned tonight, Sunday November 25th, at the Comedy Underground, in Seattle.

LAST SHOW:
SICC-33 Finals Week–Night Five
SUNDAY–November 25, 2012
Comedy Underground, Seattle
Showtime:  8pm