The Colbert Report
Last night I watched the first episode of the Colbert Report, the latest Daily Show spinoff. While I wasn't quite as disappointed as I was with the office... it wasn't so great. I'm really hoping that they're taking the first few weeks to figure out what works, what doesn't, etc, cause I think Stephen Colbert's really funny... it was just a long thirty minutes. A couple things I didn't really care for..
1) The intro music. It sounds like it wants to be the Daily Show theme, but everyone's playing it at different times -- it's a lot of noise.
2) It didn't help that during a conversaton with one of his crew members, the camera angling in on the crew member caught the teleprompter in the background, and you could read their conversation as it was going on.
3) Is it a news show? He only mentioned one... maybe two... current events headlines. There's a ton of stuff he could have covered, humorously, that weren't victims of the Daily Show Report.
4) And those headlines were mentioned in some segment called 'The Word', where I guess he invents a word and then goes off on a rant about it? I didn't quite follow, though parts of that did make me laugh.
5) The interview was a little wierd, but entertaining. I think Stone Phillips was wondering why he was there...
I hope they work out some of the kinks, cause like I said, I think the show could be really funny. I'll have to watch for a few weeks, and see how things go.
4 comments:
Regarding (2): I assumed that showing the teleprompter during their conversation was intentional, since they talked about being behind schedule, which clearly appeared on the teleprompter, which would make it ironic for them to claim to be behind schedule; perhaps poking fun at supposed "improv" moments hosts use to humanize themselves. Or, it could have been a goof, but that's what I thought.
Yeah, it's possible. Who knows? I missed it tonight, but once exams are through I'll get back to watching.
Re #3: This show strikes me as more of a meta-satire of the whole pundit thing (the tone withouth the scratch, maybe?) rather than just a straight-up news-of-the-day thing.
Colbert is straddling the line between TDS and the type of thing Chris Morris was doing in Britian in the 90s, which was more a bare-knuckled brutalizing of the news format and how it was in love with its own voice, although the On The Hour/The Day Today/Brass Eye teams used Dadaistic bogus news to drive their points home.
The Day Today radio shows are well worth a download as a point of reference.
Actually, it was a lot better tonight. Maybe it was just me being in a bad mood.. who knows. :)
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