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Strike Watch: Another Day in Late Night
Jon Stewart by Kevin Fitzsimons/Comedy Central
The only true “moment of Zen” I experienced while watching the awkward writer-free return of Comedy Central’s The Daily Show Monday night — or, as Jon Stewart is now calling it, “A Daily Show” — was when his sole guest, a professorial labor expert, said of bitter strikes like the one the Writers’ Guild is currently engaged in: “It’s never intractable.... Eventually, they all get solved.”
From his lips to....
What a day it was in Strike World. The shoe finally dropped regarding NBC’s telecast of this Sunday’s Golden Globes Awards. The ceremony is canceled, and the awards will be presented in a news-conference style, covered exclusively by NBC News. Talk about your lose-lose propositions. Conferring “news” status on the Globes is an absurd exercise in hollow self-importance. The only reason the Globes is worth a toss isn’t because of who wins — just try to remember who won any of last year’s awards, bestowed by a curious, arbitrary and tiny cabal of foreign press — but because it’s such a great all-star party. By keeping the TV element in play, however pompously, the fun is ruined and the party is over. All that’s left are the Globes themselves. What a bad joke.
The situation just gets weirder on all fronts. CBS finally confirmed that in mid-February, Showtime’s grisly Dexter is joining its prime-time Sunday lineup (the same night Dexter airs new episodes during its Showtime run). CBS thinks the show is compatible with its crime-time lineup. Maybe so, but I know it’s superior to most of the generic shows on CBS’ schedule. And is it really ready for network prime time? I’m not so sure. It’s hard to say at this point if edited Dexter episodes will have the same impact. The violence in this show about an oddly sympathetic vigilante serial killer is often largely implied, but the impact is still unusually graphic, not to mention the pay-cable-caliber quotient of profane dialogue. At the very least, those who have yet to experience Dexter will recognize a psychologically complex gem, and perhaps by comparison begin to realize what a revolting sham the CBS hit Criminal Minds actually is.
Also weird? Late-night rivals Jay Leno and Jimmy Kimmel bonding in unity over the strike and agreeing to appear on each other’s shows Thursday night. Strikes obviously create very strange bedfellows. Kimmel stood up for Leno on their first night back, while Leno continues to be hammered by WGA watchdogs for writing his own monologues, an apparent breach of the rules. (If only Leno would take a clue from Conan O’Brien, who isn’t trying to pretend it’s business as usual and instead is using the strike as an opportunity to make a new, different and at times oddly exciting show during this desperate time.)
Which brings me back to Monday’s late-night escapades. While over on CBS David Letterman was having his “strike beard” shaved off, a very funny bit that recalled Dave’s classic stunts of yore, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert each sported fake hairpieces at the start of their respective shows, Stewart’s a unibrow that he mockingly hoped would become “the writers’ strike equivalent of the AIDS ribbon.” Later, noting that the strike had knocked him off the air way longer than the aftermath of 9/11, Stewart snarked, “The writers’ strike is now nine times worse than September 11.”
Yeah, I know. Not funny.
Strike, strike, strike. Is that all Jon Stewart could talk about? It seemed so. Even on a day when Hillary Clinton’s display of emotion in New Hampshire was circulating constantly on cable news, Stewart’s show was depressingly absent of topical commentary — aside from a quick snippet of Mike Huckabee’s Iowa triumph last week, allowing him to make a variation of the same Chuck Norris joke Conan O’Brien delivered last Friday.
Then it was back to the strike. The irony was thick as fog in Stewart’s studio as he skewered both sides of the frustrating standoff, making despairing fun of what he called “a math problem.” Like his fellow hosts, Stewart expressed sympathy for the writers, but seemed especially peeved that the Writers’ Guild hadn’t found a way to make an exception for his show the way it did for Letterman’s company.
“Would you consider it anti-Semitism?” he grilled his stone-faced expert, Cornell prof Ron Seeber. “The whole reason I got into this business is I thought we (Jews) controlled it,” Stewart joked, milking an iota of laughter through the sour grapes.
The first new episode of the The Colbert Report (which Colbert pronounced “Col-burt” instead of the usual “Col-bear”) was more successful, in part because Colbert’s show is basically one long piece of performance art anyway, and just staying in character as a parody of a rabid union-hater gave the show more oomph than Stewart could muster without his usual scripted off-the-headline segments and mock field pieces. Colbert’s sign-off, “Writers, I’ll see you in my dreams,” was a rare genuine moment in a show that sometimes threatens to choke on its rampant sarcasm.
I usually enjoy The Daily Show much more than the often one-joke Colbert Report, but on the first night back, the tables were turned. I’m getting used to that in this topsy-turvy strike world, while hoping that, as the writerless nights go on, Stewart will look beyond his own dilemma to the more important business of making us laugh. You’d think with the primaries now in full swing, he’d have plenty of material to riff on, even without writers.
It’s worth noting that no moment of either Comedy Central show was as memorable as David Letterman submitting his face to a male and female barber, emerging with a cut lip and a great clip for the archives. And this was a segment that required no writers, as far as I could tell.
For another take on the returns of Stewart and Colbert, read Cheers & Jeers.
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Jan 8, 2008 8:52 AM
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Actually it's funny because I enjoyed Jon's show alot more than Stephen's. I thought that Stephen didn't work without writers and he showed it with multiple uses of clips from November etc.
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Jan 8, 2008 10:33 AM
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Criminal Minds is not a revolting sham it is good TV. Though not Dexter good.
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Jan 8, 2008 11:21 AM
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I keep watching Leno and laughing a lot. His Headlines always rock. If you say the best thing on Letterman was a non-writer bit (the shaving...gee sorry I missed that - not.)you have to wonder if the WGA is shooting itself in the foot. I have also been wondering what good it does to have SAG boycotting Leno and Conan, wouldn't it be better to get people on the shows standing up for the writers, bad mouthing the networks? Jay tries to support them with some pro-writer bit but wouldn't it be great to have a line-up or actors praising writers and putting out their point of view?
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Jan 8, 2008 12:16 PM
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What kind of vendetta do you have against Jon Stewart? He talked about the strike the whole episode? How about your love b***h David Letterman? He can't talk about anything other than the strike. And the only joke Stewart said that got mixed reaction was the 9 times worse than 9/11 crack. Everything else got huge laughs from the audience. And Colbert wasn't hugging people in the audience... he was seating them (in what truly seemed like 3 minutes of unscripted, genuine standing ovation).
But yes, Colbert was perfectly in character and I believe had the most successful post-strike episode of any of the late-night shows. One of his funniest episodes ever.
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Jan 8, 2008 1:42 PM
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As much as I usually love Letterman, he has just been off his game lately. It seems like his writers are sleeping on the job. On the other hand, Leno and Conan have been extremely funny without their writers. I know it makes it harder on those 2 guys, but they really are funnier without their writers.
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Jan 8, 2008 1:58 PM
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Agreed.
Daily Show was mostly uncomfortable and mostly unfunny. (9/11 joke was awful.)
As far as network late night talk shows go:
Leno is still bland and hollow, proving that with or without writers, he's the same boring dude. (It's not me, it's you.)
Dave still makes me happy with his offbeat, unique brand of humor. He's consistent, he's funny, he's Dave. And I love him.
Craig Ferguson is still uneven (especially with those wretched sketches), but a likable guy and a great interviewer.
CONAN is fresh and real and I'm LOVING him sans writers. I'm watching/DVRing every night, which I haven't done in...ever. I've always liked Conan, but never like this. Hands down, the WINNER of the Strike World Late-Night Wars.
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Jan 8, 2008 3:32 PM
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I agree that Conan has been the best. He is almost grass-roots in his creativity. You can tell he loves what he does.
I expected more from Jon, and he seemed very bitter (perhaps justified, but still). Stephen can do no wrong in my eyes, and I can't understand people who dont think his show is funny. He is brilliant. That standing-o was absolutely genuine, and I thought it was rather touching.
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Jan 9, 2008 4:44 PM
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The 9/11 "joke" on the Daily Show wasn't actually a joke. Anyone who watches this show on a regular basis should be able to tell the difference between a joke and sarcasm based on Jon's tone of voice. The 9/11 "joke" was not meant to be funny, it was sarcasm...as in 'how can this writer's strike be more disruptive to TV than the devastating attacks on 9/11'. I thought it was brilliant and thought provoking, as it should be. What the *&#@ are these unions thinking???!!!
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Jan 9, 2008 6:05 PM
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catbean is right about sarcasm vs. joke re: Stewart. I think you were way off in your assessment Matt and your column really did read as though there were some underlying personal beef between you and Jon. And it also seemed as though you were a stranger to his shtick.
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Jan 10, 2008 3:33 AM
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