After a week full of intense competition, the finalists in this year's Boston Comedy Festival Contest took the stage last night at the Cutler Majestic. The pressure was already high because they would be judged by Lifetime Achievement Award honorees Shelley Berman and Bill Dana, Comic of the Year winner Lewis Black, and a range of industry bigwigs.

The comics also faced an even bigger challenge--the Red Sox game. These comics had to distract the audience from the fact that the Red Sox were playing the Indians at that very moment.

Winner Tommy Savitt, who was wearing perhaps the ugliest shirt in the existence of the universe, proved he was more than up to the challenge.

Image of Tommy Savitt from his official website. Find out more about Savitt's performance and that of the other contestants after the jump!

Each comedian did an extended version of his preliminary and semifinal routine. In the order in which the comics took the stage, here are Bostonist's brief descriptions of their "greatest hits":

Tom Simmons: Hatin' on the Hummers, poisoning chicken samples at the mall

Victor Varnado: Black Lightning equals a big no-no, really detailed fantasies about female bodybuilders

Myq Kaplan: Why a girl talks to a dog in an anti-pot commercial, the slippery-slope logic behind the line that if gay people can marry, then what's to stop people from marrying animals?

Dan Sally: Contemplating the meanings of "sleeping like a baby" and having a "pot to piss in"

Tommy Savitt: How to seduce the ladies in general, the observation that "Life is like the bottomless bowl of salad at the Olive Garden--it sucks."

Jim Tews: Baloney is the taste of failure, coming from a broken home means you say "Who's your step-daddy?"

David Powell: Bra-cup grades, the common comedic lament of not gettin' laid much

Robert Mac: Living in Mom's basement, solving the world's problems with Prince

Savitt never once broke out of character as the smooth-talkin', sleazy dude your momma told you to avoid. In fact, he turned his character up a few notches from what he showed at the preliminaries. He waltzed onstage wearing a splotchy yellow-and-blue shirt that could be seen from the back rows of the theater. That used-car-salesman-on-a-long-weekend look added oomph to some of his character's shady lines, such as, "Who would you want for a lawyer? Someone who's never been arrested, or someone who knows what you're going through?"

It makes sense that Savitt would appeal to the judges, particularly to Bill Dana. Dana also built a character--the befuddled and charming Jose Jimenez--and took that character as far as he possibly could.

Bostonist Honorable Mentions go to Myq Kaplan and Robert Mac. Judging from the applause streaming Kaplan's way, either he brought a busload of friends, or he is one of the most beloved comedians in this city. He also deserves propers for cooking up some of the most clever jokes of the night and for saving us from having to watch Final Destination.

Like Savitt, Mac also fleshed out a character. His doofy character is reminiscent of Stephen Colbert in that Mac's onstage persona is also incredibly arrogant and remarkably stupid. It's really hard to pull off that satire of people who think they can solve all the world's problems yet who still refuse to move out of their momma's garage.

One last note: Any of the women we listed as getting robbed could have triumphed on that stage. We'd happily wager that some of their routines were stronger than some of those that made it to the finals. The competition is tough, but we hope that some of these women come back and get their shot on the Cutler Majestic next time.