The set of the spurious junket is plastered with product placement ads for Mike's Hard Lemonade, as is the venue for the party for the finalists that follows. As the 10 goofy finalists mill around the party, doing shots, greeting Comedy Central execs and feeling validated, Clarke remarks:

"They are all so excited. This is probably the biggest thing that ever happened in their lives. And the biggest thing that ever will happen ... The Comedy Central executives were there. And that's always good: To parade these little losers around and go, 'Look at who you're meeting!'"

Leary then proceeds to get wasted, and pretty soon is awash in anger and self-pity. Asking Clarke why he doesn't have his own show anymore, he lashes out against George Lopez. "A Mexican has his own fucking sitcom and we got nothing!"

The finalists are chosen -- seemingly at random, save for one girl, Amber, for whom both Leary and Clarke obviously have the hots -- and the next day, they are brought in to pitch. Amber pitches a show about four friends in New York who "meet religiously every Sunday and they talk about philosophy and they talk about the world around them ... and then Jesus comes."

"Quite frankly," says Clarke, "I was thinking about how I could get into Amber's pants, and I wasn't really listening to the pitch. It was only when she mentioned Jesus and [Comedy Central executive] Lou Wallach nearly choked on a roast beef sandwich that I realized what was going on."

Next, Mike pitches an idea called "Shews," which is about five roommates who live in the Shews Building in New York, and is somehow about walking around in other people's shoes. A third guy, Carmine, pitches an animated series about five guys sharing a beach house, but mostly spends the pitch meeting trying to unload some hats and posters for a movie he made.

"I never thought we'd be in that room so long," says one of Leary's producers as they try to pick a winner. "It just proves to me that the idea of a contest to give some aspiring TV writer a shot is a giant waste of time."

In the end, Leary, Clarke and the Comedy Central executives decide to go with the "Shews" concept -- only incorporating Amber's Jesus into the household. The next day, Leary hires Amber to be his "eyes and ears" while he's away from the set and checks into rehab.

It's hard to imagine that the resulting sitcom, "Shews" with Jesus, will be funnier than watching "Contest Searchlight" winner Mike Lombardi pull one Pete Jones moment after another in preproduction and on the set. Anyone who remembers Jones' instant imagined social and artistic parity with people like Emma Thompson and Harvey Weinstein will appreciate his insisting on calling A-list actors for his jury-rigged sitcom and forcing Peter Gallagher, eventually recruited to be the show's star (and consistently described as "the best actor in New York") to wear chaps.

If we learned anything from "Project Greenlight," it's that few things are more amusing than a self-important talentless hack, and one of them is a self-important, talentless aspiring hack who bites the hand that feeds him. "Contest Searchlight" is dead-on in its mockery of a Cinderella story gone bad. If things continue in the vein of "Project Greenlight" and "American Idol," the next generation of celebrities may be thrust upon us after popping off a lucky bottle cap or a winning yogurt lid. We can only hope Denis Leary will be there when that happens.

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