Formerly Fat Comedians

I've been watching The Price Is Right off and on for a week or so. This is after Drew Carey lost something like seventy pounds this year. He's skinny now, practically a beanpole. Undoubtedly this is a great move for him, losing so much weight and keeping it off will almost guarantee him years more life with fewer problems like diabetes or joint pain, that kind of thing.
   But he's not funny any more.
   The first day I watched I wasn't sure. It has been a while since I'd seen the show, and it's a new season, things weren't 100% the way I remembered. Drew wasn't zinging them quite the way he used to, but maybe it was my imagination. I thought. So I gave it another day. And another. And another. I was thinking maybe I wasn't paying attention, or he was subtler, or God knows what. But everything else was pretty much the same, same models, mostly the same games, same wildly exuberant crowd. I can only assume that the production staff is the same, even though they got rid of Rich Fields as announcer. Same same same same same. Only the host was no longer fat.
   After a few days' viewing I reached the inescapable conclusion, Drew just wasn't as funny thin as he was fat.
   Which got me to thinking. Why is that? Why would Drew Carey be funny fat and not funny thin? Is it my expectations? Maybe. My memories of the other season and my time 'between assignments?' Maybe. But I think empirically it's the case that he's not as funny when he's thin.
   I think that whatever changed inside him - for the better, most assuredly - that led him to want to drop seventy pounds is also the thing that made him lose that comic edge. Funny comes from a place of pain, and when you smooth the edges of that pain you take the bite out of your funny. It's the curse of comedian's success; when you ease the trauma and pain of your early days you get rid of the thing that made you funny in the first place. Eddie Murphy, Chris Rock, Seinfeld, Ray Romano, Kevin James, it happens to them all. It happened to Drew Carey too.
   I don't begrudge him the change, but The Price Is Right just ain't the same. I guess I'll have to find something else to occupy my time in the middle of the morning. Maybe Sesame Street is on, I could use a dose of Elmo.