LOL: Last One Laughing Season 1 Review

Episode Guide

The First 10
The Puppet Master
A Shocking Surprise
Another Type of Christmas Story
Drown Me With Jack
It Tastes Like Chocolate

It’s difficult to know where to start with Amazon Prime’s newest reality TV show. Taking cues from Big Brother, Last One Laughing sees 10 Mexican comedians thrown into a house for 6 hours after pledging 100,000 pesos to try and out-funny each other. The catch? If you laugh, you lose. While the concept itself seems like an interesting one, the execution is anything but. Controversial decisions, cringeworthy humour and an abundance of all the usual reality TV tropes you’d expect are rife here, all of which overseen by one man, Eugenio Derbez, calling the shots.

For those outside Mexico, all of the comedians that enter this house are nothing more than ordinary people. Amazon’s latest reality show does next to nothing to get you invested in these people and outside a very brief introduction via the host of the show, we learn virtually nothing about these individuals before they enter the house. The first episode introduces the 10 different comedians and starts the clock, with each episode following that counting down the hours with the last one standing raking home a cool 1 million pesos.

The rules are relatively straight forward – if you’re caught laughing then you’re given a warning in the form of a yellow card. If you’re caught laughing a second time you’re given a red card and have to pack up your stuff and leave the house. While the premise itself seems simple enough, the rules are skewed by our charismatic host as he gives people yellow cards for smiling, grinning and for one lady, simply pulling a silly face for the group. When someone is caught, a red alarm is sounded which allows everyone in the room the ability to laugh and joke for a few minutes before regaining composure and continuing once a replay is shown to that individual. Of course, the arguments here are justified with a lot of exasperated and incredulous looks from the comedians when the decisions against them are given. With one man overseeing the entire operation, further questionable decisions are thrown up throughout the series, some of which incredibly controversial and seem designed to spark drama rather than hosting a fair competition.

To try and outwit their fellow comedians, the men and women inside the house do everything they can to try and spark up some humour. As anyone in the industry will likely tell you, trying to force comedy rarely works and more often than not has an adverse effect. Fart jokes, burping, toilet humour and silly outfits all combine to make Laughing Out Loud one of the most absurd and unfunny shows on TV. It’s quite an achievement too and something that really isn’t helped by the inconsistent amateurishness of it all.

Now to be fair, Mexican humour may well be geared toward this slapstick, over-the-top crudeness and that’s fine. If this is the style of humour in Central America then you’re sure to have a blast with this. There are sparks of genuinely funny moments here but they’re often undermined by questionable decisions from the host. From an outsider’s perspective with little to no knowledge of the stand up scene in America, it does make for some pretty painful watching at times. Some of the outfits are genuinely quite funny though with one in particular actually leading to a yellow card for a fellow comedian after such a somber indifference toward what he was wearing. This is the sort of humour that makes others laugh but these moments are few and far between.

Is LOL: Last One Laughing worth your time? Well it really depends on your style of humour. Whether you watch this as a throwaway show in the background or actively engage in watching this competition unfold, far too many moments in this series are mired with unfunny scenes and forced humour. While this alone would be fine, the bending of rules from the main host and abundance of questionable decisions around this make Last One Laughing a series that relies very heavily on its humour. For those outside Mexico you may find yourself watching this trying to laugh rather than trying not to laugh.