Unsurprisingly to those who know my musical tastes, I was not as taken with
Ms. Minaj as you, but I attribute that to the generally poor quality of
Colbert's panels.
Something just seems off with the whole show. The monologues are generally
good (and does any other show billboard the main topic of the monologue
like Colbert's does?), but the cold opens (especially the ones that feature
Brian Stack, which is almost all of them) are almost uniformly dreadful,
the scripted pieces (the big furry hat, confessions, the awful, awful
greeting cards bits) are truly terrible, and the panels are fast,
superficial, and too heavily (to me) reliant on the pre-interviews ("Can
you teach me some Australianisms?"). The nadir is, of course, the music.
Batiste's band is actually good -- in the studio --- but one would never
know that from what one hears on the air, and the booked musicians come in
one flavor: too loud and terrible.
In spite of all of this, I watch the show -- or at least have it on -- but
it's a long way down from even those too-frequent nights when Dave was
phoning it in.
--Dave Sikula
On Tuesday, August 14, 2018 at 7:06:18 AM UTC-7, PGage wrote:
>
> More and more I find myself switching off TLLS episodes on my DVR after
> the Monologue/s, or maybe a third of the way through the first interview,
> especially if the first guest is just a celebrity. Last night’s show was an
> exception.
>
> Nicki Minaj just killed it in her segment. Not just that I found her
> hilarious (though I did) - but she was able to deliver the persona and
> schtick that is her calling card in an organic and smart way. Most often on
> talk shows a celebrity guest with a well defined, sharp persona either
> tries to stay with their character and comes across as forced and hack, or
> they act kind of like sophisticated Jerry Lewis (the least likable form of
> Jerry Lewis) and try to convince us that they are nothing like their
> persona. Minaj delivered what I assume must have been pre-planned bits in a
> spontaneous and effective way, showing how her performing persona is an
> elaboration of who she is. I have never been a huge fan of her act, but she
> started to win me over last night.
>
> She is not the only one of course - I suppose we could make a list of the
> best reliable celebrity guests on late night talk shows (e.g. Steve Martin,
> Martin Short, Amy Sedaris, just to name three of my favorite from the
> Letterman era), but such a list is only meaningful in the context of how
> horrible most guests are. I liked Dave enough to suffer through all but the
> worst guests (three I always clicked off of: “Dr. Phil”, Martha Stewart,
> Donald Trump); I like Colbert enough, but not enough to stay with even half
> of his typical celebrity guests. Fortunately, more than most, he often has
> journalists and politicians and other substantive guests of note.
> --
> Sent from Gmail Mobile
>
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