I called for your support once before, when Clay Aiken was in the wild card show on American Idol 2. Once again, you came through for me. After Dat Phan put on his set in the finals I was sweating. I felt like a couple of comics were better. Fortunately, his popularity as a person won him the competition. More importantly, I’ve got some observations. Is it a coincidence that the ultimate winner was the one who was chosen by the focus group? For those of you who didn’t watch the show, Dat won the exemption by having the best situation comedy pitch in front of NBC’s focus group. The prize for the LCS was in fact a sitcom on Comedy Central. I don’t think the show was rigged, but in that sense I think the right guy won.

What I was glad to see was the voting revealed, unlike American Idol, which in fact was rigged in season 2. Dat came in with 35%, a very strong number considering that he almost beat Rich and Ralphie combined. Good fight, good night. Ralphie May finished with 28% and looked like someone had run off with his carton of ice cream when Jay Mohr announced he had lost. Priceless television moment, but NBC was too stupid to get his (or Dat’s) reaction to the victory. We’ll have to wait for The Tonight Show to see Dat. Maybe we’ll catch Ralphie on the next Subway commercial or on an afternoon edition of Extra.

Rich Vos took home a stunningly low 18% and seemed pretty cool about losing. Jay called him a heavyweight, and my take was that he put on the best set in the finals. His downfall was pointed out to me by norcaldoll. By not performing in the head to head competitions at the comedy warehouse he failed to build an audience of fans at home. No one roots for the thug, and with his mafia style alliance that’s what everyone saw him as when he ganged up on Dat.

Cory Kahaney had just 12% of the votes and looked like a ghost when she dipped out of the running so quickly. Her performance was not commensurate with the voting, but it was almost a personality contest more than comedy.

Tess Drake sucks and with only 7% of the vote apparently everyone agrees with me. She seems out of place on stage, and after watching her own set I think she figured it out. When Jay asked her how she felt, she said she could have done better. Uh, yeah, like if you hadn’t spoken a word.

So congratulations to my man Dat Phan who did me proud and delivered the win, sending me through the roof and into a high ten with norcaldoll. Thank you to whoever voted on his behalf, and I’m done for now.