I'm on a similar page. I can't quite put my finger on it, other than to say
the show seems to be coasting. Try a new comedy bit once in a while? More
visits from God and fewer faux ads from crappy lawyers (which aren't any
funnier than they were when Stack did them on Conan)? Hold an intervention on
air the next time Stephen gets a guest a drink?
Interviews - just about everyone currently doing them in late night seems
horrible/disengaged with rare exception. I'll watch Stephen, Conan and Trevor
regularly (though often delayed). I think I should like Seth more than I do,
but I don't watch it much. When I do, I respond much more to the non-interview
stuff. I know British Jimmy is still bad at them, I haven't checked in with
the other Jimmys to figure out if they've gotten any better. I'm skeptical.
Any suggestions? I know Netflix has more 'talk shows' on these days, but they
aren't doing the guest interviews that much. Graham Norton is only on so many
weeks out of the year.
David
On Wednesday, August 15, 2018, 5:40:04 AM EDT, 'Dave Sikula' via TVorNotTV
<[email protected]> wrote:
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.--
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