TV Review: LOL: Last One Laughing Canada Episodes 1 & 2

The concept is simple: lock ten funny people in the same room for six hours and tell them not to laugh. What could go wrong?

There is a cruel reverse-psychology at play when someone tells you not to laugh. For many, the instinctive response would be to either start laughing, or pop a blood vessel to subdue any remotely funny thoughts. In 2016, Amazon Prime made this challenge the main premise of their reality game show LOL: Last One Laughing. With different versions presented across the world, the comedy challenge is now being answered by a crew of Canucks in LOL: Last One Laughing Canada.

The series features a powerhouse crew of Canadian funny folk, including Caroline Rhea (Sabrina the Teenage Witch), Debra DiGiovanni (Last Comic Standing) Jon Lajoie (The League) Tom Green (The Tom Green Show) Brandon Ash-Mohammed (This Hour Has 22 Minutes) Andrew Phung (Run the Burbs), Dave Foley (The Kids in the Hall), Colin Mochrie (Whose Line Is It Anyway?), K. Trevor Wilson (Letterkenny), and Mae Martin (Feel Good), and is hosted by movie star/dragon trainer Jay Baruchel.

In the first two episodes, made available on February 18, 2022, the contestants made it abundantly clear that even a moment of prolonged eye-contact can result in an explosion of laughter. But laughing (or even smiling) can result in the contestant being eliminated from the game. “Much like Canada’s favourite pastime, soccer,” one violation earns the contestant a yellow card as a warning, a second violation results in a red card, signifying their elimination from the game. The last remaining comic earns $100,000 for the charity of their choice.

Baruchel’s quirkiness and charm are on full display as host, but if F-bombs were Legos he could have built a castle. While the casual over-swearing during the introduction was somewhat distracting, it became clear that this show was intended for a mature audience, and also provided a glimpse at some of the profanity and nonsense that was about to be unleashed.

As the contestants arrived, the viewer quickly developed a sense of who (or what) may be their undoing within the competition. Martin and Lajoie were faced with mixed feelings of joy and dred upon meeting Green and Mochrie. While having a strong poker face and rapid wit, Foley (noted as the “shit disturber at large”) may find his undoing at laughing at his own jokes. The most tragically funny assessment on potential threats came from Mochrie, stating “Caroline, Dave and Tom were the dangers for me, because we’ve been around for a while. We know how to exploit weakness.”

Contestants had their own methods to avoid being caught in the cross-fires of laughter. Wilson made the wise choice to avoid eye-contact as much as possible, preferring interactions to be held in profile. DiGiovanni applied a perma-frown, and would actively deny laughter by expelling it with a clear “NO.” Martin and Lajoie soon learned that covering your mouth to hold back the laughs will result in having to spend two minutes in the hockey-themed penalty booth, where the perpetrator must sit while the other contestants pepper them with jokes to get them to crack.

While each contestant has their own individual kryptonite, they also have their own laugh-strategies tucked up their sleeves. Phung busted out a freestyle saxophone solo, showcasing skills that one can only assume were self-taught. Mohammad doubled-down on any musical moments by dancing as if he were at Osheaga. Rhea made a bold costume choice for her duration in the competition, which sadly went unnoticed by the other contestants. According to Wilson, he chalked the lack of response to Canadian-ness: “we were just too polite to say anything.”

And then there’s Tom Green: part-clown, part nutcase, completely original. Green unloaded an arsenal of weirdness within the first hour of the competition, including everything from plastic poop, to a Johnny Carson monologue, to an unthinkably funny sequence involving “delicious cheese sandwiches.” Whether he will be able to maintain this pace remains to be seen, but based on the first two episodes, his other-worldly absurdity paired with an equally funny poker face gives him an incredible advantage.

With penis-arm photoshop (yes, that happened) and an unlikely cameo of a hockey player’s bare backside (yes, that happened too) the first two episodes set the tone for an engaging competition series that offers guaranteed laughs for fans of Canadian comedy.

LOL: Last One Laughing Canada is available on Amazon Prime.
Episodes Three and Four will release February 25, and the Fifth and Sixth Episodes will launch on Friday, March 4, 2022.

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