'Roast Of Rob Lowe' Had Some Surprising Standouts

After spending the first hour of The Comedy Central Roast of Rob Lowe looking shell-shocked at the vitriol directed her way, author and Trump evangelist Ann Coulter took the stage. And, while she tried her best to emulate the others who had performed before her, Ann Coulter's roast jokes were terrible. Honestly, this may be the first time that a performer on the stage has actually done worse than Mike "The Situation" Sorrentino at The Roast of Donald Trump . Performing to mostly silence or to booing as she alternated between promoting her recently published book and trying vainly to mock the other people onstage while poking fun at her extreme conservatism... it was deeply uncomfortable to watch.

And while delivering what were supposed to be self-aware jokes, Coulter frankly bungled almost every punchline, seemingly thrown by the booing and silence that followed almost everything she said or did. Not only was her set poorly conceived and poorly written — it was so poorly delivered that it barely made an impact in the room, let alone on the audience.

If I had to pick my favorite person from the night, it would probably be Amy Poehler playing the Devil (because of course, only Satan could be responsible for how young and handsome Lowe still looks after all these years of fame). But, since she didn't technically appear onstage, the winner of the night has got to be Jewel.

Surprisingly, the most positively received roaster of the night was also a non-professional comedian. Jewel, a singer/songwriter mostly known from her work in the early 2000s, was a natural, throwing out jokes that killed early in the night.

She closed things out with a song parody that mocked Lowe's old reputation as a ladies' man, singing about the a TV appearance where she didn't want to kiss him — which she explained Lowe went on to use as a calling card. She triumphantly took back that story, flipped it on him, and managed to perform flawlessly even when faced with some pretty aggressively mean jokes. I'd call that a pretty great roast debut.