A Commonplace Book

You might be surprised to know where an ex-Daily Show correspondent stands in regards to Tina Fey and the present state of “The Daily Show”.

To give some quick background first though, in October I scribbled some thoughts on “The Colbert Report’s” first attempt at a book and included a brief tangent criticizing “The Daily Show” as of late. Now I feel like I’m not the only one thinking these crazy heretical thoughts, because in a recent interview with Reader’s Digest, Tina Fey said:

My friend, SNL writer Seth Meyers, coined the term clapter, which is when you do a political joke and people go, “Woo-hoo.” It means they sort of approve but didn’t really like it that much. You hear a lot of that on [whispers] The Daily Show.

As might be expected, she’s getting slammed for it by anonymous internet commenters (the good folks at Digg being especially harsh), but one of The Daily Show’s own said a none-too-dissimilar comment about a year ago. Here’s Rob Corddry when asked about “The Daily Show” audience:

The Daily Show audience used to drive me fucking crazy, because they would just applaud at every reference to some right-wing guest being taken down. Or anything slightly to the left of center. They would stand in their chairs, and it would just drive me crazy.

The Daily Show, at its best, is not smug. And Jon tells the audience, “Look, tonight Bill O’Reilly is gonna be on, and we know you don’t like him, but he is a guest in our house, and you treat him with respect.” And Jon absolutely hates it when people will just applaud at anything remotely liberal.

It’s a knee-jerk audience. It’s so easy.

I don’t think anyone (Tina Fey, Rob Corddry, or myself included) is saying that “The Daily Show” is now unfunny. What I do think is that an increasing number of people are growing tired of the way the show seems to be playing to the audience and the direction that audience seems to be driving the show.

Not to make wildly generalized claims without spending the effort necessary to find video proof, but: a solidly funny joke that takes a politically neutral stance or even (gasp!) takes a legitimate shot at the Democrats (as opposed to a compliment veiled as an insult) will routinely elicit a collective “meh.” But show a clip of The Decider, then cut to Stewart doing his “heh heh heh” impression, and then give the audience between 3 and 4 seconds to react - a thunderous applause is guaranteed.

There is still much to love about “The Daily Show”. It has great interviewees on a regular basis and the field pieces are still hilarious. I just don’t think that the daily review of the day’s news stands up well as comedy when compared to the rapid-fire callbacks of “30 Rock” or the ongoing meta-humour of “The Colbert Report.”

I don’t think I’ll be replacing “The Daily Show” with “The King of Queens” anytime soon. But when I get home from work at 10 PM and have a choice between pulling up “The Daily Show” clips online or getting an extra half hour of sleep, these days I’m inclined to choose sleep.

I think Law & Order has the potential to be interesting when they do a “Ripped From The Headlines” episode, but the past few episodes that I’ve seen have veered away into “Not Even Trying” territory. Most of the time I sense the plot is simply the lede from each of a series of articles someone read in The New York Times connected by a very, very tenuous narrative thread.

Without even finishing the most recent episode of Law & Order: SVU, I counted:

• Female genital mutilation
• Genocide in Africa
• Stop Snitching
• Polygamy
• Police shooting civilians

Writing it down myself, I almost understand how this series of topics could make sense in the process of writing a script. But seeing each of these pop up in the span of 20 minutes entirely dilutes the importance of each issue. “Based on a True Story” probably sounds enticing in a promo clip, but it’d be nice if the writers could go back to working on even remotely original ideas. The show was far superior when they did.

Contrary to what you might expect given his outspoken distrust of all things written word, Stephen Colbert has published a book, “I Am America (And So Can You)”. There’s an accompanying audio-book version with the same title, and word has it they’re not exact replicas of each other. No doubt someone at the publishing house is hoping to sell both versions to a few of the more die-hard members of the Colbert Nation.

To compare it to its cousin in source material, the literary companion to The Daily Show, “America (The Book)”, was fairly spectacular but was also somewhat divorced from the show itself. The authors took the tone of the show and applied it to American history as well as American politics, ending up as a sort of cross between The Daily Show and The Onion. Colbert’s book, meanwhile, stays closer to home, and I think that might have been a poor decision.

I’ve been more than well aware of how much the live aspect to The Colbert Report amplifies what I like about it, but listening to Colbert’s humor without the crowd and with careful editing really takes something away from the humor. Without going too deeply into the increasingly frustrating divide between The Daily Show and The Colbert Report (and I also hope without sounding too harsh), I think its fair to say that Stewart has regressed into poor imitations of Bush and Cheney for punchlines while Colbert has been pushing into new territory and experimenting as a comedian.

Watching Colbert flub a joke because the on-screen “Alpha Dog Of The Week” graphic barks too early is just as funny as watching him land a joke with perfect comedic timing. Similarly, there’s something amazing, even watching from home, the way he can get the crowd involved. I’m even fairly certain that the flub is planned, but I don’t really care as long as I can get lost in Colbert’s fantastically bizarre universe of wrist injuries, Tek Jansen novels, and killer bears.

By staying close to the format of the show and the character but channeling it into book format, I think Colbert and his staff of writers might have missed the opportunity to push in a different direction, something they do so well on their TV show. Its good for what it is, but the restrictions of the format have left it far short of even the more mediocre bits on the show.

A preview clip from his book can be found here.

And now, your moment of zen: