Tough Crowd with Colin Quinn was a comedy talk show that aired on Comedy Central from 2002 to 2004. The show featured host Colin Quinn and a panel of comedian guests, discussing politics, current events, and social issues.

Show history and format

In 2002, comedian Colin Quinn was given his own show on NBC, titled The Colin Quinn Show, which was broadcast live from the Saturday Night Live soundstage in New York City. The show only lasted for three episodes. Each of these three episodes aired on successive Mondays from March 11, 2002 to March 25, 2002. Although NBC canceled the show, Quinn took a similarly-themed show to Comedy Central later on that year. On December 9, 2002, Tough Crowd With Colin Quinn debuted on Comedy Central with an eight-episode test series, which ran Mondays through Thursdays, until December 19, 2002. The show was picked up in January 2003, and the regular series began its 21-week run on March 10, 2003. The show aired weeknights at 11:30 p.m. ET, immediately following The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. The show was presented as an alternative, unpolished and more accessible political "round-table" discussion/shouting-match program in the manner of CNN's Crossfire, taking cue from Bill Maher's Politically Incorrect. The guests on the panel were usually comedians who had been given topics in advance on which to prepare material. Quinn's regular guests consisted mainly of Comedy Central affiliated comedians from the Comedy Cellar comedy club in New York City. The club was renowned for its postperformance roundtable discussions with comedians in the audience about political issues. These exchanges were the inspiration for Tough Crowd. The show would open with a monologue by Quinn. Quinn would then stand in front of a pool table, or sit on the edge of it, very often sipping coffee, eating or perusing through a newspaper. Usually, there were four comedians as guests, but sometimes three or five. Quinn would introduce current events and moderate the discussion, which would take up most of the episode. Near the end of each episode, there was usually a sketch of some sort, followed by each of the guests doing a brief monologue on a particular topic that was discussed earlier in the episode.

Regular guests

The show featured many different comedians, including well-known comics such as George Carlin and Jerry Seinfeld and Kevin Hart, but the core group that was regularly rotated into the show's panels and often paired together was: On September 26, 2003, Comedy Central aired an hour-long Tough Crowd themed stand-up comedy special called Tough Crowd Stands Up hosted by Quinn and featuring stand-up sets from the show's 5 regulars: DiPaolo, Giraldo, Norton, O'Neal, and Vos.

Episodes

Series finale and epilogue

Jim Norton addressed the program's demise on his blog, where he mentioned that Comedy Central would send down notes to the show discouraging the predominant focus on political topics and discussions about race and ethnic issues. The network claimed this was only because they already had scripted/talk programming that addressed these issues, referring to The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and Chappelle's Show, and warned that some of the views expressed on Tough Crowd did not appeal to the demographics at which Comedy Central's current business model was aimed. The last show contained emotional monologues by Quinn, who attacked his detractors (such as The New York Times) as being hypocritical and elitist for their negative reviews. He also defined "comedic integrity" as the ability to critique the hypocrisy of society, but to be honest enough to admit that you are just as guilty of it as anyone else. The implication was that many political comedians spend all their time criticizing society and others, but rarely themselves.