Not sure if this is a Film Room or HL topic, but I think it could pop here. It's a long ass read. I'm only posting the first part:
How 'Liberal' Late-Night Talk Shows Became a Comedy Sinkhole - MEL Magazine
‘Every single person in late night knows it’s a dumb factory of lazy ideas,’ one fed-up writer tells us. ‘I will never be happy with anything I make.’
In 2005, I attended the taping of what turned out to be a landmark episode of The Daily Show. The front half was the usual skewering of that day’s news, nothing too memorable — but the guest was the infamous Christopher Hitchens, a prickly proponent of the Iraq War, something the audience and host Jon Stewart regarded as a colossal mistake. While the two men on stage began their conversation with the obligatory chumminess of the late-night TV interview, it was bound to become a fierce debate on Iraq, and that’s exactly what happened: For around 20 minutes, Stewart challenged Hitchens’ excuses for a disastrous invasion, and Hitchens punched back, impressively enough that he could at one point observe the crowd had gone quiet.
It was an electrifying encounter — one of the early examples of the breathless “so-and-so DESTROYS political opponent” fare that has choked the internet in years since. When Hitchens left, Stewart more or less apologized for the intensity of their debate, joking that the production team would have a great time trying to edit it down into a coherent segment. In truth, it wasn’t that common for him to go on the offensive, and anyone in that room intuitively understood why: It may have been cathartic, and even enlightening, but it wasn’t very funny.
Talented as Stewart was (or is) at sneaking punchlines into a thorny discussion of geopolitics, those moments found him resisting a deep well of gravity created by bloody, corrupt and spiraling American empire. When you slice right into that issue, it will never be a laughing matter. The brutal reality of lives destroyed and a region in chaos cannot be domesticated for your living room.
Understandably burnt out and ready to pass the torch, Stewart left The Daily Show in 2015 and has largely kept to himself in the Trump era. This makes the demarcation between the remarkable run of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report during the Bush and Obama presidencies and the current ecosystem of late-night talk shows especially crisp. In fact, Stewart’s career tells the story of what I regard as the three phases of political consciousness within the format. He took the reins of the show in 1999, right as the comedy hacks finally ran out of bad Monica Lewinsky jokes. From there, he (and soon Stephen Colbert) walked the tightrope of cogent, biting political satire, incidentally gifting mainstream network shows with freedom to ignore or address Washington at will.
Then Colbert transitioned to that platform (theoretically leaving his political commentary behind), Stewart bounced, Trump took power in a shock election, and we entered a third act for TV writers expected to cull humor from the state of government and its leaders. Remember, the late-night model wasn’t really built for this: Johnny Carson, though a progressive, explicitly avoided such topics and guests of that orbit; David Letterman wrapped his opinions in a hundred layers of irony; Jay Leno remained safely noncommittal and recently complained that today’s hosts are one-sided, begging for a return to every centrist’s favorite value: “civility.” But while it’s easy as ever to hit Leno as the epitome of uncool and brush off his asinine prescription (rudeness is hardly a hindrance to good comedy), the diagnosis from which he proceeds is inescapably true:
These shows are fukking unwatchable.
How 'Liberal' Late-Night Talk Shows Became a Comedy Sinkhole - MEL Magazine
‘Every single person in late night knows it’s a dumb factory of lazy ideas,’ one fed-up writer tells us. ‘I will never be happy with anything I make.’
In 2005, I attended the taping of what turned out to be a landmark episode of The Daily Show. The front half was the usual skewering of that day’s news, nothing too memorable — but the guest was the infamous Christopher Hitchens, a prickly proponent of the Iraq War, something the audience and host Jon Stewart regarded as a colossal mistake. While the two men on stage began their conversation with the obligatory chumminess of the late-night TV interview, it was bound to become a fierce debate on Iraq, and that’s exactly what happened: For around 20 minutes, Stewart challenged Hitchens’ excuses for a disastrous invasion, and Hitchens punched back, impressively enough that he could at one point observe the crowd had gone quiet.
It was an electrifying encounter — one of the early examples of the breathless “so-and-so DESTROYS political opponent” fare that has choked the internet in years since. When Hitchens left, Stewart more or less apologized for the intensity of their debate, joking that the production team would have a great time trying to edit it down into a coherent segment. In truth, it wasn’t that common for him to go on the offensive, and anyone in that room intuitively understood why: It may have been cathartic, and even enlightening, but it wasn’t very funny.
Talented as Stewart was (or is) at sneaking punchlines into a thorny discussion of geopolitics, those moments found him resisting a deep well of gravity created by bloody, corrupt and spiraling American empire. When you slice right into that issue, it will never be a laughing matter. The brutal reality of lives destroyed and a region in chaos cannot be domesticated for your living room.
Understandably burnt out and ready to pass the torch, Stewart left The Daily Show in 2015 and has largely kept to himself in the Trump era. This makes the demarcation between the remarkable run of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report during the Bush and Obama presidencies and the current ecosystem of late-night talk shows especially crisp. In fact, Stewart’s career tells the story of what I regard as the three phases of political consciousness within the format. He took the reins of the show in 1999, right as the comedy hacks finally ran out of bad Monica Lewinsky jokes. From there, he (and soon Stephen Colbert) walked the tightrope of cogent, biting political satire, incidentally gifting mainstream network shows with freedom to ignore or address Washington at will.
Then Colbert transitioned to that platform (theoretically leaving his political commentary behind), Stewart bounced, Trump took power in a shock election, and we entered a third act for TV writers expected to cull humor from the state of government and its leaders. Remember, the late-night model wasn’t really built for this: Johnny Carson, though a progressive, explicitly avoided such topics and guests of that orbit; David Letterman wrapped his opinions in a hundred layers of irony; Jay Leno remained safely noncommittal and recently complained that today’s hosts are one-sided, begging for a return to every centrist’s favorite value: “civility.” But while it’s easy as ever to hit Leno as the epitome of uncool and brush off his asinine prescription (rudeness is hardly a hindrance to good comedy), the diagnosis from which he proceeds is inescapably true:
These shows are fukking unwatchable.
