Stand-up comedians appearing on Comedy Central, particularly those who appear on Friday nights at 11 p.m., are at a disadvantage. The bulk of their routines are created for “mature” audiences, and are, therefore, heavily censored. The censor’s bleeps distract from the comedian’s delivery, and sometimes—if the comedian is a fast talker—they obliterate more than just profanity.
The comedian’s act, which may have been an hour or longer, is edited down to about 44 minutes. The editing takes its toll on continuity (as does the insertion of commercials). Sometimes returning from a commercial break finds us in the middle of a sentence. These factors leave the television audience piecing together the comedian’s routine, arriving at what they think he said.
Dov Davidoff will appear on Comedy Central Stand Up, 11 p.m. (E/P), Friday, May 1. He is a frenetic man, whose mannerisms and delivery make the audience suspect that he is deranged. He admits to having a “psychological deficiency” or he “…wouldn’t be doing this stuff for money in the first place.” He wears ragged clothing, and his stage is dressed as a litter-strewn back alley. He speaks quickly and sometimes leaves off the ends of words or sentences. You can see how the choppy delivery of an ADD Jersey guy would suffer from editing. Nevertheless, this particular Jersey guy delivers.
The son of a hippie mother and a Jewish father (not a new school “do-your-taxes Jew” but an old school “steal-your-car Jew”), Davidoff greets his audience by describing what a crappy week he’s had. His week was so bad, he even had a sour experience at Starbucks. (Starbucks seems to have taken McDonald’s place in the stand-up comedians' book of reliable resources.) He explains that large companies go out of business because they make bad decisions, and illustrates this with a recent flight experience he had. The flight was three hours late taking off, so the airline gave out six-dollar dinner vouchers, which leads to the question, where do you get dinner at an airport for six bucks?
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