Nothing, IMHO, beats the moment at the Friar’s Club Roast where the one comic says, “I wouldn’t fuck her with Bea Arthur’s dick!” Bea looked like she was gong to piss herself she was laughing so hard.
Jeffrey Ross, the Jerry Stiller roast. He was on the Shatner special, too, but no big moment this time for him.
You seem to be assuming that no one has seen a Friar’s Club roast. I have seen several. They weren’t this uncomfortable. I think part of what made me uncomfortable was that the material mostly wasn’t funny, and I felt embarrassed for the people saying it (I hate watching people flop).
I watched for a few moments. The humor was crude and unfunny, pretty much all based on saying taboo words; strip the jokes of the obscenities, and they were barely up to Bennet Cerf’s Book of Laughs level.
And Jason Alexander was there, so it was bound to stink.
The whole idea of using Shatner was a mistake in the first place. It’d be like roasting David Hasselhoff: all the possible jokes have already been done. You need to roast someone who people haven’t dared to poke fun at before, at leasr, not on this scale.
To me, the best parts were the non-comedians- Betty White, Sulu, and Shatner himself. Betty White I think had the best timing and delivery of anyone. Jeffrey Ross is a legend, but just didn’t have his best material. Andy Dick and Artie Lange and Farrah Fawcett seemed to be competing to see whose gonna die first. And it was great to see George Takei bust a gut every time some made a gay joke about him- glad to see a guy who revels in being called a cocksucker 
And I was glad to see racist jokes are still alive and well in these PC times, it’s just that jokes about fried chicken and ribs are kind of dated. And the vitriol shown by Sulu seemed pretty real, as did Artie Lang’s for some reason- he didn’t even shake Shatner’s hand.
Yeah, Mr. S and I agree that that’s still the line to beat. (But I thought Bea’s expression was more of a huge “WTF? Where the hell did THAT come come from?” – although it was obvious that she thought it was funny.) That whole roast was the best one IMHO. Loved Ben Stiller saying, “Hey Dad – COCK!” just to make him squirm.
Weird how Andy Dick was acting all pissed off at the gay jokes directed at him – but I suppose that’s just another part of his deranged schtick. (Is he trying to be Andy Kaufman II or what?)
And yeah, the “Sulu is gay” stuff got old. But at least Takei was laughing.
I thought the jokes were for the most part crude.
I had hoped at this point in my life to be watching Shatner guest star as Adminral Kirk with Takei on whatever they named “Star Trek: Excelsior.” 
True, the jokes weren’t as funny as past roasts. But this one you didn’t watch for the jokes. You had to watch it all the way through to see it get more and more surreal. It was like a season of a celebrity reality show crammed into an hour.* Playing to the camera became much more important than the jokes. It was good jaw-dropping spectacle.
- All right, you got me. I’ve never seen a celebrity reality show. Except for the clips they show elsewhere. But it was just like all those clips.
Shouldn’t all jokes at a Pamela Anderson or William Shatner roast be directed at the Anderson or Shatner only? Was this done at the older roasts ie the honoree and other celebrities were made fun of?
The last roast I’ve seen was the roast of Mr. T.
I thought George Takei was wonderful. Very well timed.
“It smells like pussy in here… I think”
No, they always make fun of everybody who’s up there. At the Friar’s Club roasts, jokes about Bea Arthur, Abe Vigoda and Alan King (among others) were a constant. They did too much of that stuff at the Shatner roast, and I guess it also becomes less funny when you really don’t know who the people are.
Yeah, I’m pretty tired of having extra people up there to share a roast. Screw that. The best roast I ever saw was the one with Drew Carey. Ryan Stiles was a great roast master.
Whatever happened to having a Roast Master was that knew that roastee personally? I thought that’s how it used to be.
I missed seeing it, but I liked the commercial for it where the one guy pulled out a paper bag and asked Shatner if he wouldn’t mind acting his way out of it. That was amusing.
The sad thing is that the actual roast was considerably longer than the special; they had cut out all the unfunny bits. :eek:
Yes, there were even worse jokes that went unaired.
Huh. Mr. Bunny and I laughed our asses off…but then, our humour is pretty lowbrow anyway.
I thought it was hilarious though. My mom corresponds regularly with George Takei ever since they got to be friends on a Star Trek ocean cruise several years ago, I really hope they rerun this so I can tape it for her.
As I said in the other thread, more Fred Willard would have been great! I laugh just looking at that guy.
Shouldn’t roasts be given by people who actually know the roastee? This way, they can recall events that actually happened, and use them to insult. It just seems much more natural to have friends doing roasts instead of strangers and acquaintences. There just wasn’t any real chemistry between Shatner and most of the roasters.
I missed this – and I’ve grown to love Shatner for the Meshuga person he truly is.
I watched some of the Pam Anderson Roast for reasons that still aren’t clear to me. It was mostly awful – HOWEVER – Bea Arthur reading from one of Pam’s “Novels” was too funny to be beaten by any of the low class hacks in the room – so I managed to turn away after that.
I’m sorry to hear this is more of the same. A real roast of Shatner in the Friar’s Club style could be a hoot.