Vos is phenomenally unfunny and annoying. Has Robinson ever made anyone but his mother laugh? O'Neal is an arrogant jerk, DiPaolo the sort of racist you can run into in any bar in America. I enjoyed Giraldo in small doses, but now that he's dead it's sad to see his friends try to make the junkie a saint. For all the supposed self-loathing these "artists" claim to have, it's clear that they are also egomaniacs.

wow, i completely missed this post, but i have to comment since it's one of my favorite shows ever (next to carnivale..also canceled). i agree, mostly, w/ #3. it was a contrast to TDS, but i believe it DID work. i think comedy central just got more and more uncomfortable w/ conservative opinions being expressed on their network (and low ratings, which i can't deny) then finally decided to can it.

i noticed, as did many other tough crowd fans, that jon stewart--after awhile--stopped telling his audience to "stick around for tough crowd." way to try to improve those ratings...by not advertising it and then have its lead-in be a show w/ a largely elitist audience.

*awaiting colin's comeback*

I enjoyed watching Tough Crowd, but not because of Colin Quinn, but because of the guests. Quinn himself may be a great guy, loved by other comedians, but - call me crazy - but I personally fail to see how he makes any kind of living as a comedian. He added nothing to SNL and he added little to this show. If Greg Giraldo had instead been the host, I have no doubt it would have been much more successful. He combines the quick wit, intelligence, knowledge, sex appeal and just plain likeability-with-an-edge that Colin clearly lacked. It's too bad his replacement show never materialized because it was deemed too close for comfort to Tough Crowd.

Well comedians are honest but they are also attention grabbers and they want their opnion to matter. For example Patrice Oneill begins talking about a subject and he starting getting his point across then Nick Dipaolo comes and interups the conversacion.

Another problem was Colin himself. He loses control of his panel rather easily which a no-no on panel shows.

Edgy is right. I found it a tad irksome after awhile especially when they just rehashed stereotypes with no real discerning opinions on each other. It got quite uncomfortable during its last season between Patrice O'Neal and Nick DiPaolo who was ganging up with Jim Norton a bit on racial issues. Perhaps I am a little too PC, but I did see some humour in it while it was on but it did hold some moments of disgust for me.

This was one of the best shows on television. If you weren't laughing, then you were just a little to PC. Although I greatly miss this show, the one part I could've done without were the sketches. Those were not often that funny.
As for the inside jokes, if you watched it enough you understood them. I loved this show and wish that they would've bumped it to once a week instead of canceling it.

I agree that the show ended up being a complete mess towards the end. Even though I didn't agree with the views of the regulars, they still made me laugh, but in the end they just tried to yell over one another and it quickly became stale. It probably would have worked better as a once a week show that ran an hour.

I think what killed it was when they got the regulars together, it turned into an inside-joke shout-over-each-other nightmare. Individually, Patrice O'Neal, Jim Norton, Keith Robinson, Nick DiPaolo, Greg Giraldo, Mark Maron, and Rich Vos are all extremely funny comedians. But get more than two of them together on any episode all they did was crank on each other and rip on Colin. While it was funny, it didn't really help the format of the show.