Was simply genius. TDS is going to go down in history like Second City and SNL for producing comedic geniuses.
Reader Interactions
52Comments
Comments are closed.
Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
Peak wingnut was a lie.
FFS people, this was a good thing. take the win.
Republicans: The threats are dire, but my tickets are non-refundable!
I’m more Christian than these people and I’m an atheist.
So many bastards, so little time.
He seems like a smart guy, but JFC, what a dick!
Let the trolls come, and then ignore them. that’s the worst thing you can do to a troll.
I’m just a talker, trying to find a channel!
Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.
When we show up, we win.
That’s my take and I am available for criticism at this time.
Nikki Haley, who can’t acknowledge ‘slavery’, is a pathetic shill.
The next time the wall street journal editorial board speaks the truth will be the first.
When someone says they “love freedom”, rest assured they don’t mean yours.
with the Kraken taking a plea, the Cheese stands alone.
Books are my comfort food!
Bad news for Ron DeSantis is great news for America.
There are a lot more evil idiots than evil geniuses.
When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.
A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.
Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.
It’s easier to kill a dangerous animal than a man who just happens to have different thoughts/values than one’s own.
In my day, never was longer.
Well, whatever it is, it’s better than being a Republican.
mouse tolliver
What was the name of the guy that hosted the Daily Show before Jon Stewart took over? Whatever happened to him? It was a completely different show back then.
Lurking Buffoon
I don’t have HBO. Is there some way I can catch the show on the Intertubes? Youtube clips are nice, before they’re taken down, but catching the whole damn thing would be better.
Lurking Buffoon
@mouse tolliver: Craig Killborn I think his name was. All I know is that he had some forgettable really late night show, but I don’t think that lasted long.
SarahT
@mouse tolliver: Craig Kilborn. No idea what he’s up to now – Karma for treating Lizz Winstead (“Daily Show” creator) like crap, maybe ? Gonna go google.
Old Dan and Little Ann
I now know there’s an election going on in India. Thanks, Mr. Oliver. The rip on Oregon was also damn funny.
ulee
All these genius’. Ther ar many.
Jacel
Craig Kilborn left the Daily Show to succeed Tom Snyder on The Late Late Show that followed Letterman on CBS. After a few years, Craig didn’t renew his contract, being more interested in film roles, which turned out to not snowball into a new career for Craig. CBS went into several months of different hosts every few nights, leading to the job being offered to another Craig (Ferguson) who has been there since. Craig Kilborn tried launching a new fake news show a few years ago, but that didn’t continue.
thruppence
@Lurking Buffoon: HBO is vigilant about keeping the paywalls around their stuff. We don’t have HBO either and I content myself with checking it out when it comes out on rentable or library check outable DVDs. But “Last Week Tonight Last Year” may lose some of its topical shine.
Violet
I think they’re re-airing it throughout the week. I’m going to see if I can get a deal on HBO for a month or two and I’ll watch it then. I really enjoyed John Oliver last summer during his stint hosting TDS. I can’t wait to watch it.
Tommy
I am watching GoT now and then Salem, then Oliver’s show.
I saw a headline on his Oregon rant but didn’t watch the video. Want to see the entire show. I just have to say you’d think the fair trade coffee hipsters in the state could maybe find somebody to produce a website. You know, just saying.
Oh JC bold claim about the Daily Show and Second City and SNL. For those that don’t know Second City (I assume folks know SNL) go Google it. Second City in Chicago has produced most of the funny people we see on TV of the last few decades.
But I guess since the staff of the Daily Show is pretty small, they have produced their fair share of brilliant and funny people.
jl
There was a Daily Show before Jon Stewart? What?
Violet
@Lurking Buffoon: If you have a cable or satellite provider you might be able to get a week or month long deal for HBO. You can always ask. A week’s free trial or something. Reduced price for three months.
Walker
Where is the website with the fake product labels from the show? I missed the link.
Just Some Fuckhead
It was good but it didn’t seem very different from The Daily Show.
BGinCHI
When Oliver figures out to do a satire of next week, then he’ll be a comic genius.
Tommy
@Violet: Same with OnDemand. That might work better cause if you wanted to binge watch a show, like Games of Thrones, you could. But OnDemand is kind of strange. Some shows they have every show. Others just the last couple, but before a new season launches they’ll throw up past years.
Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant)
Watching it now. Good stuff.
KG
@Walker: should be their facebook page… Also, loved this line:
askew
Except Daily Show only seems to produce to white male stars probably because 75% of their writing staff and on-air talent is white males. SNL has a horrible history with diversity, but Daily Show’s is much, much worse.
Dexter's new approach
Kilborn was funny, had a great delivery, but was a sports guy that didn’t have the training in comedy that Stewart did. He got out of his lane.
I thought Oliver’s first show was stiff and over-reaching if not bordering on BBC news boring. india’s election? Why should we care? They have so many people and dumb Americans. Or the NSA interview, old stuff where the official’s rationale was left dangling, and a few stalker employees as proof that it’s program is harmful.
Better writers please.
KG
@askew: the only two white guys the Daily Show has now are Stewart and what’s his name. The funniest person they have now is Jessica Williams (and I hope she gets the show after Colbert moves).
Aaron
You can find downloads of most shows. And recent dvd releases. And games. This is what torrents are for. A torrent file is an index pointing to where the file (show/dvd/mp3/.exe/etc) can be found. Here is a search engine for your torrent: http://torrentz.eu/
you put in the name of the show. It will list sites that have a torrent file for that show.
download the torrent. now use your torrent program to open the torrent file for the show which downloads the show.
I use UTorrent to download my torrents. utorrent.com
Tommy
@KG: Agreed. Would be nice for her to get his show, or at least the time slot. I find her LOL funny. The only place I would disagree, I think Jason Jones in the interviews he does as a “correspondent” is the funniest thing on the entire show. Bar none.
ruemara
@KG: You kidding me? Jessica Williams, who I have not even bothered to learn her name, is terrible. I christened her unfunny black lady after two attempts to watch her and nothing since then has changed my mind. She sucks.
Tommy
@Aaron: You should be careful here. What you are suggesting is illegal. I won’t lie and say I have not bittorented a few shows (mostly from the BBC) but you have to be careful. There are these things call copyright trolls. I got legal papers and my ISP records given to a third party cause they said I downloaded some porn from Pirate Bay. I didn’t. But you open yourself up to potential legal action. Or just headaches (which was all what happened me turned into).
Tommy
@ruemara: See there is a problem with a replacement. You don’t think she is funny. I do. I’d almost say I’d like John Hodgman to take over, but honestly he can at times grate on my nerves. My gut is they will come up with somebody nobody is even talking about that isn’t even on Comedy Central. But what do I know.
jl
@KG: I think Jessica Williams and Assif Mandvi are consistently the funniest on their own. But think the correspondents are best when they do ensemble work together.
@ruemara:
Opinions can differ. Who do you think is best correspondent?
ruemara
@jl: Frankly, it was Colbert and Oliver. I find Stewart sometime-ish, but Williams has been an utter disappointment. She’s like a black hole of funny, sucking all the funny from anything near her. Nope. You guys can have her. Manvi could be decent.
slag
Aasif Mandvi is the best interviewer they have. Hands down. I’d put him above Oliver most of the time. Dry, quick, sharp as a blade. The guy is hilariously insightful.
Tommy
@jl: It is hard for me to tell. When you try to write something funny, it isn’t always funny. The Daily Show is funny a lot more than not, but some of the correspondents seem to be given, from time to time, some pretty bad stuff to perform. I am thinking mostly of the lady that was on Third Rock. I find her the most “unfunny” of the bunch, but I think most of the time nobody in the world could have made her script funny.
A Humble Lurker
@jl:
I know you’re not asking me, but I think Samantha Bee is the funniest person there now. I think it’s because she’s the only one still bothering to keep the reporter act going. Everyone else is just acting crazy with no rhyme or reason to it.
LanceThruster
I pretty much like (or have grown to like) every player on the show, but certainly have favorites…it’s still interesting to think that the show doesn’t follow the model of the NBA of getting the best you can assemble, but rather needs to hit a selected cross-section. Like I said, they’re all good and as such need a chance to hit that level
Violet
@ruemara: I generally think she’s not that funny, but she’s had some good pieces. I love Samantha Bee’s recent performance art bits. Jason Jones’ interviews are good. I’d love to see more Larry Wilmore.
scav
@Violet: I liked Larry too. And Aasif Mandvi.
Tommy
@Violet: Well there is the problem for finding a Colbert replacement. Pretty much everybody here thinks this or that person on the Daily Show is the funniest. Almost every member mentioned. Why I think they will go outside the Daily Show for Colberts replacement.
Violet
@scav: Yeah, I love Aasif Mandvi too. Miss seeing Wyatt Cenac. Generally a talented crew on TDS.
scav
@Tommy: Colbert is pretty much sui generis. Can’t really see a replacement, beyond someone taking up the time-slot, and that could be anything. Not that I know much about fighting over slots on TV networks by production companies, which maybe complicates things.
FlipYrWhig
Re: Colbert successors, keep in mind that everything else original to Comedy Central is either dick jokes or stoner incomprehensibility. I don’t trust them to make good decisions as a network. They’ll probably find a bunch of people as fearsomely ugly as the Workaholics and animate them into amphibians in funny colors while bleeping every fifth word. Because edgy, that’s why.
jl
@ruemara:
” You guys can have her. ”
Oh,.. if only Jessica would have me…
I loved Colbert and Oliver. I guess when it comes to Daily Show correspondents, I have easy standards. I like almost all of them. I’m like the typical visitor to a beer festival, who thinks all beers are above average, and I just can’t pick a winner.
But, I like they are all best when they do ensemble work. Those are the real laf riots for me.
jl
@slag: I agree.
For me, 90 percent of them, since I have been watching the show, are talented enough to do at least a couple of hilarious skits. Once some one I like does that, I start rooting for them.
I think Madvi is the sharpest in terms of balancing insight and humor. My only criticism is that he has a limited bag of comedic gimmicks.
But, from what we have seen so far, so does Colbert, but he does it so incredibly well, and is so smart. I hope he can make the transition from his character so something else smart, interesting and funny.
jl
@Tommy: What bothers me about some of the correspondents work is when they blow the story, factwise. If they cannot do better than Fox and CNN on giving people the real truth of the story, then what is the point of the show?
Hard to say when that happens how much is due to the correspondent, the writers or the producer of the piece. Cenac did some brilliant commentary on some special assignments, which I assume he cooked up with his producer. But I remember he totally took an easy and misleading cheap laugh approach to a post office story, which pissed me off.
Seems to me, Manvi, when he goes off on assignment is rolling his own way. and like commenter above says, is great on interviews. Oliver said that he makes fun of people who deserve it when he does many interviews. Manvi almost always has uncovered a good point and goes in for the kill, or he has with the writers and producers. But the approach of each correspondent’s work on assignment seems so consistently individual, that I think they have a lot of input into how to do a story.
Warren Terra
@askew:
Aasif Mandvi got a feature film made and has had his stand-up career greatly enhanced. Larry Wilmore and Wyatt Cenac have had their profiles greatly raised. Producer Lizz Winstead has gotten several jobs largely on her credibility from The Daily Show. It is perhaps true that no female cast members have gone on to significant careers after leaving the show, but part of that is that Samantha Bee has stuck around the show for a decade and is apparently treated with great respect by the show – and Bee may have other reasons to like her role there, as she met her husband at the show and the show has accommodated her schedule as she had a kid or two, which is a normal part of the working woman’s life but a bad part of the entertainment industry.
jl
@Warren Terra: and what percentage of the cast has been female? Big time show biz is still pretty white make chauvinistic. And that is half of Mr. Bee’s schtick on the show.
Jacel
My favorite Daily Show Correspondent ever was Vance DeGeneres (Ellen’s brother). He had the perfect deadpan delivery and timing in the most absurd situations.
Warren Terra
@jl:
Sure enough. But that’s hardly just The Daily Show. How many women have come out of ALL of late night comedy in the last thirty years? There’s Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, and I think that’s about it. 1970s SNL made a couple famous (Radner, Curtin), but I can’t think of any others between then and Fey / Poehler. Even Julia Sweeney only broke through (to the extent she did) because of the quality of the stand-up show she wrote after discovering she had no great career prospects having left SNL.
J.Ty
Well, I thought that was a good show with lots of good background on the stories. I’d only ever seen anything about the Indian election while I was in Germany the other day, too–that, and in The Economist, but screw those guys.
BruinKid
FYI, Last Week Tonight has its own YouTube channel where you can at least see some of the highlights from the show, and some special web stuff they do. Like you can see their Oregon health care exchange debacle, complete with Lisa Loeb’s special appearance. The good thing is you get it straight from the source, and not some bad video recorded on someone’s phone.
C.S.Strowbridge
@Lurking Buffoon:
They have a YouTube account. https://www.youtube.com/user/LastWeekTonight
It isn’t the whole thing, but it is pretty close. Plus, it includes extended interviews.
balconesfault
I don’t think you can just fit someone else into Colbert’s show and have them recreate Colbert’s schtick in any way, shape or form … and most of all, I don’t think Comedy Central should even try. Colbert as Colbert was brilliant in the character he created – and given the oxes he was goring he absolutely had to be brilliant or just one or two mishaps along the way would have been enough to have quashed his character/show and give plenty of ammo to future right wing whines of a liberal entertainment empire and to future “centrist” vapors over the same.
Someone just trying to be Colbert, and not doing it as well, could just be a disaster, on par with the “1/2 hour news hour”. Best to not even go down that pathway and stain the incredible legacy that Colbert created. Somewhere down the line, some other talent will develop his own character that does what Colbert has been doing and earn his own slot, the way Colbert did … but the network shouldn’t be trying to create such a character.
Central Planning
My fcking cable card in the Tivo decided it didn’t want to get HBO (or really any channel over 18) last night. Hopefully TW can fix that today and I can record it.
Ronzoni Rigatoni
@Aaron: Torrents are great. However, HBO et al. monitor torrent downloads and complain bitterly to your ISP Provider who threatens to cut you off and possibly impose fines if whoever in your household continues stealing content. There’s ways around that, but ‘taint free either.
MCA1
@Warren Terra: Totally agree with your general point, and that askew’s assertion that the Daily Show is some kind of deplorable bastion of white male privilege is ridiculous. Just wanted to add Julia Louis-Dreyfuss to the list of successful females SNL has provided, though. I suppose it’s notable that she’s succeeded as an actress more than a show creator, however (I think – she may be/have been a creative force behind the Old Christine show or Veep, but I haven’t heard much about it if so, and obviously her breakout was on Seinfeld, which was all Seinfeld and David).