PAPA CJ

Who is PAPA CJ? He's one of the semi finalist in the NBC's most popular reality show "Last Comic Standing" (American version of கலக்க போவது யாரு). He bowed out of the competition yesterday after a tough semi final elimination. PAPA CJ is from New Delhi and he was performing stand up comedy. He was one of the very few "foreign" performers who qualified for semi finals for this show where a winner gets $250K .

I thought PAPA CJ was funny in the beginning but as he progressed from initial screening to next rounds, he became a little repetitive. Most of his jokes revolved around "IT outsourcing & Call centers", "Reincarnation" & "KS". But I thought he competed well. What he could have avoided is picking a person in audience and start making comedy using that guy. Also, I thought he lacked the very basic ingredients "body language" and "dramatization", which is very critical in the American reality TV shows. In American television, even a 5 year old kid behave differently by showing emotion or being funny when on camera and people here like it. In India it is opposite, when on camera most of the guys pretend they are very quite and composed and show lots of humility, even though they have different personalities. The most recent example is the behavior of some of the kids in the show SUPER SINGER JUNIOR.

Overall it was pretty interesting to watch PAPA CJ's journey in this show and guess what he said when he bowed out..something along the lines of .."I don't care if people don't remember me as PAPA CJ as long as they know that a guy from India came here and competed in semifinals..". I seriously love "Mera Bharath Mahaan" style statements from our Indian stars and performers.