TV Series On The Television

[Mongrel]

Colbert to officially replace Letterman on the Late Show

[Classic]

It's not the first man, cut that shit out.

[Mongrel]

It's not a joke

[Thad]

He's the best choice, if the most obvious.

Wonder what they'll do with his timeslot. I think Bee and/or Jones could carry it if their network pilot doesn't get picked up. Or they could just extend The Daily Show to an hour like I've been saying they should do for the past 15 years.

I look forward to his announcement on his show. Particularly since it's only been a week since the #cancelcolbert tweetstorm.

[Smiler]

I'm really enjoying the people crying about how Colbert will never be funny again because he'll be dropping his Colbert Report character, not realizing that Colbert is pretty funny and not that different at all when he isn't pretending to be a conservative pundit.

[Thad]

Colbert's character is great and has been responsible for some of the sharpest satire of our new century -- he has had the nation's best news coverage of SuperPACs, he nailed Bush to the wall at the Correspondents' Dinner, and he's ruthlessly satirized the idea that all viewpoints are equal from day one and even before -- he started The Colbert Report with Truthiness, and spoke his oft-quoted line about facts having a well-known liberal bias back when he was on The Daily Show.

I also admire the hell out of his ability to improvise in character during interviews.

I hope we haven't seen the last of Colbert's conservative pundit persona.

But it's also limiting.

I loved many of Colbert's interviews, but in others his persona got in the way. Sometimes interrupting your guest to say stupid shit is funny, and sometimes it's not. (It usually depends on whether or not the thing you're interrupting is also stupid shit.)

I also think that a lot of his best material involved him either dropping character or at least doing something with the character besides acting like a right-wing blowhard. His Christmas special was delightful, and I think a lot of his sharpest material was based on playing with social media and other online technology to pull pranks -- trying to get a bridge or a space station named after him, for example.

Also, out of character, he seems like a wonderful, genuine kind of guy (I once read a Rolling Stone interview that compared him to Ned Flanders). He's so friendly, warm, and enthusiastic; he's exactly the sort of guy you'd want to give an interview where he's trying to pull his guest up instead of just playing his own ridiculous character.

The Late Show is, by its nature, the kind of show where he won't be as edgy or controversial as he was on basic cable. There's going to be a lot less spontaneity, and he's going to be in a position where his bosses are really worried about him offending his guests. Those are going to be drawbacks.

On the other hand, he won't be limited by one exaggerated persona. He can sing and dance (oh, and for another example of some of Colbert's greatest shows, look at the musical performances where he gets up and sings with them -- not because of his singing so much as his pure joy to be doing it) and do all sorts of stuff Stephen Colbert the character couldn't.

And he can still do a lot of the stuff he's been doing -- the online pranks, the expose segments, the fake celebrity feuds.

Hell, wonder how soon we'll see him and Fallon reignite their feud.

[Mothra]

Honestly, I love the Colbert Report character, but I'm really looking forward to seeing what he can do outside of the limitations of being a oblivious buffoon. I think the weakest part of the Report is the interviews, where he has this annoying tendency to stop an interesting line of discussion to remind everyone that he's still in-character and "not listening" or "completely missing the point."

Plus, every time I've seen him drop the character for an interview or QA session, it's always been fantastic stuff. The best part of his RSA Keynote was the QA, where he just tried to answer everything as honestly as he could.

[Thad]

Boondocks season 4 coming, without Aaron McGruder's involvement.

It was about what I expected: not very good, but not really any worse than a typical mediocre season 2 episode. Hell, it was pretty much the same episode as the Usher one.

[Thad]

Haven't gotten around to the second episode of Fargo yet, but just caught the first and it's as good as I'd hoped. It's not as impressive as the movie and doesn't try to be (the smartest decision the showrunners have made is NOT to try to recreate the movie), but it completely nails its tone -- the weird, slightly surreal comedy broken up by graphic violence; characters both likeable and less-so going about their mundane lives; one villain just a regular guy who got pushed too far and another who is truly sinister and represents something far darker in the human psyche.

On the whole, yeah, pretty fucking good so far.


(And while I'm no expert on Minnesota accents, Martin Freeman does a pretty convincing one to my ear.)

[Blossom]

Lousy Brits, learning our language and coming over here and stealing American roles.

[Thad]

ALL our superheroes. Batman, Superman, Spider-Man -- I guess it was the next logical step after having an Australian play a Canadian.

[Grath]

Lousy Brits, learning our language and coming over here and stealing American roles.

THEY TOOK OUR JERBS!

[Thad]

I think my favorite Jon Oliver segment when he hosted The Daily Show last year was the one about anti-immigrant sentiment.

I'm paraphrasing, but he said something like, "Yeah, try telling ME to learn English. YOU learn English, motherfucker!"

[pacobird]

alright I will say spoiler things now so

the thing is the entire series is this two-decade spanning story with people producing mysteriously recurring sentences like "the yellow king" and "Carcosa" and "time is a flat circle"

and wide stretches of unaccounted for time where the certified bastard protagonist could have done anything

and the twist at the end is that the fucking gardener did it

It's like Lost ended the first season by revealing the island was just a inlet off the coast of New Hampshire and they all survived because of decent seatbelts.

NO BETTER

they find a mad scientist with a smoke machine

and the scientist has a boat

i sort of took the ending as a meditation on rumination/nihilism like rust's, despite being seductive to people of Certain Temperaments and Circumstances, being a really great way to vanish up your own asshole and subsequently miss the mundane truths that keep us engaged and moving forward

it was, after all, ALWAYS a pulp detective story and it was only because of rust's bullshit monologuing that you thought it wasn't

(i am not saying it was good, though)

The last episode of HIMYM read like they took the worst possible fanfiction post from Tumblr, cut out all the gay sex, and used the results for the episode.

I've not watched in years (but thanks to my mother, I see an episode every few days) but this baaasically shat on everything that happened in the last five or so seasons.
It's nuts.

and since i'm feeling contrary today, i actually liked it, inasmuch as i could have liked the ending of a show i was very familiar with but never really cared for (my wife loves it)

hopefully we can agree that the arc of the show was not about meeting The Mother but rather about ted maturing to the point where he could meet The Mother and not fuck it up by being a complete shitbird. ted spends X seasons not only looking for his dreamgirl, but also demanding that the universe hand him his dreamgirl under rigidly-outlined circumstances; he is habitually concerned not so much with the quality of the women he dates as the terms by which he dates them. one of the more artful parts of the show IMO is how it subtly suggests that he does not give a fuck about the thoughts and feelings of his conquests; he wants marshall's life, but will never get it as long as he thinks like barney

in light of this, the ending makes sense as a demonstration that ted is now capable of not only not alienating a worthy woman but also of accepting their relationship and circumstances as they develop (two children with no actual marriage, sickness and death) rather than feeling somehow cheated by true love not materializing entirely on his own terms

[zaratustra]

THAT'S EXACTLY THE POINT. The series is about growing as a person (it's also about being entirely too dependent on your group of closest friends, but disregard that) and sending the whole thing full circle just because circles are pretty ruins it.

[pacobird]

yeah but ted doesn't need to throw robin by the wayside just because he was a dingus 20 years ago

[Thad]

You can watch the first episode of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver for free.

It's not bad. Definitely a Daily Show knockoff, but that's not a bad thing, and I think it'll find its own voice as time goes on.

[TedBelmont]

Speaking of Comedy Central:



Review is pretty dang fantastic.

[Mothra]

Community cancelled. This season will be its last.

Fuck

Everything

[TedBelmont]

Larry Wilmore is getting his own show!