Scientist Turned Comedian: Tim Lee

Early in his show Tim Lee compares completing a Phd and becoming a comedian with spending six years in training for the Olympics then working as a glass blower. To extend the analogy for this Scientist Turned Comedian, Lee can only make window panes. His powerpoint slideshow of scientific gags are commonplace, easily visible and flat.

The Californian doctor of ecology and evolution gives a mock seminar to the audience, who, by the end of an hour learn that Lindsay Lohan likes drugs, Louis Walsh is odious, and all history students are doomed to become baristas. Though Lee uses accurate decay graphs, algorithms and atomic formulas to arrive at these conclusions, nobody’s taking notes. 

The disjunct between Lee’s soothing documentary-narrator voice and the blackness of his comedy is admittedly striking, but a scalar problem about dropping a bomb on Louis Walsh is needless, and rendered further disconcerting by his understated, throwaway delivery. 

Coming up with original material for Lee proves as challenging as the average scientist coming up with an original theory. Only a riff on Facebook’s greater popularity than Google feels freshly cynical enough to amuse, and even then this may not be its first outing. It's not as if nobody's ever commented on Facebook before. 

Lee certainly is internet savvy, enough to glean the domain name ‘YouTubeComedian.com’. But his placing this on every dividing slide of the show feels excessive; especially for a show that is probably more enjoyable just to watch online.