Well, this brings us to the end of Comedy Central's 100 Greatest Standups of All Time. Their Top Twenty consisted of Richard Pryor, George Carlin, Lenny Bruce, Woody Allen, Chris Rock, Steve Martin, Rodney Dangerfield, Bill Cosby, Roseanne Barr, Eddie Murphy, Johnny Carson, Jerry Seinfeld, Robin Williams, Bob Newhart, David Letterman, Ellen DeGeneres, Don Rickles, Jonathan Winters, Bill Hicks and Sam Kinison, in that order.
I was right that their Top Two would be Pryor and Carlin…though I would have reversed the order. Matter of fact, I might have put a couple of folks ahead of Pryor, but it isn't an unreasonable choice at all. My pal Daniel Frank theorized they'd put Carlin first since Comedy Central just acquired all of Carlin's HBO Specials. I thought of that but then noted that immediately following the broadcast on which they revealed their #1 pick, the network scheduled a Richard Pryor Special. In any case, I hadn't noticed either of these facts when I predicted Carlin and Pryor. They're just obvious choices.
Also as predicted, they had Bill Hicks in the Top Twenty. I thought there were two names unknown but as it turns out, they teased 19 of their picks instead of 18. I accidentally dropped Steve Martin from the list of those previewed, and Lord Buckley didn't make their list at all.
The tricky thing with a ranking like this has to do with what's being considered. A lot of the folks there are beloved for what they did apart from standup. Most of the clips they showed of Jonathan Winters, for example, were of him guesting on shows where he was being interviewed. He's always been brilliant at that but I don't think I'd consider that "standup." I don't think most people who love Jonathan Winters have even seen him do standup…but I also think that if Comedy Central had used a stricter definition, they'd have left out a lot of Big Stars. If I'd been assembling a show like that, I think I'd want to get clips in of Johnny Carson and Billy Crystal.
Yeah, one can quibble. I can't imagine any criteria by which Roseanne Barr places higher than Bob Newhart…or Ellen DeGeneres above Robert Klein. And while I think Chris Rock is terrific, I also think I'd want to see him be terrific for a few more years before I put him above Cosby and next to Woody Allen. But we can all come up with arguments like this, and I still think it's not a bad list. Someone put a good amount of thought into it and there's some nice recognition there for some folks, plus a good overview of how diverse the standup talent pool has been — and how non-diverse in some areas.
The next thing I'd like to see them do is to take this list, send it to everyone who's alive and on it, plus everyone who might qualify in the second hundred, and ask them to vote their twenty favorites. I have a hunch it would yield a very different Top Twenty…but Carlin and Pryor would still probably be in the top two slots.