TV is again safe for satire
Stuart Wade - salon.com
Enter Comedy Central's new "The Daily Show" which, while borrowing heavily from "SNL," Michael Moore's "TV Nation" and the old "Late Night," provides an antidote to the soft-gloved mush that passes for current event-oriented comedy on the other networks.
The half-hour "Daily Show" is on five times a week, and its length and frequency give its writers and performers plenty of room to maneuver and experiment--allowing it to be more timely than "SNL" and more thorough than Letterman, Leno and O'Brien. Thus, viewers are apt to see things like tasteless Tupac Shakur jokes airing a night or two before it's announced that the rap star didn't make it.
The show, hosted by former ESPN SportsCenter fixture Craig Kilborn, is a grab bag of newscast parodies, on-location segments, guest commentary, and small, random bits. It's these bits--sight gags and small details--that are perhaps what the show does best. Leaving for a commercial break, we see the graphic "Where's Kevorkian" superimposed over a map of Michigan--all over the state, tiny Kevorkian busts dot the town names where the eutanasia enthusiast has lately struck. Another recurring sight gag is the placement within news headline segments of photo captions identifying people like Jesse Jackson as "Media Whore" instead of, say, "Founder, Operation PUSH." Though we've seen similar gimmicks before, the show pulls them off with aplomb.
The widest-known "Daily Show" bit is something called "This Day in Hasselhoff History," which traces the illustrious past (and overexposed present_ of "Baywatch" uberstar David Hasselhoff. Though the show recently retired the segment, happily it was replaced with "This Day in Tesh History," duly paying tribute to America's premier composer/Olympic commentator ("1986: Debuts as host of 'Entertainment Tonight; 1971: Attica prison riots begin.")
Arguably the show's funniest and most original recurring item is "Godstuff." Here, Jon Bloom (a.k.a. Joe Bob Briggs, the renowned drive-in movie expert) collects and runs actual footage of televagelist diatribes on topics ranging from masturbation-induced acne to the belief that "Terminator 2" was the Devil's Sequel.
As funny as it often is, the show has some bugs to work out. Right now the show relies too heavily on Kilborn's reading of news items from behind a desk. The scripted stuff is hit or miss, and the familiearity of the format doesn't help. Further, Kilborn often suffers a hazardous propensity to raid Dennis Miller's proprietary brand of sarcasm. While this may have been excusable for a SportsCenter anchor, here it's a harder sin to pardon. (But hey, if you're going to lapse into an imitation of an ex-"Weekend Update" anchor, better Miller than, say, Kevin Nealon.)
"The Daily Show" is best when it's pretaped or improvisational. The field reports of A. Whitney Brown, another "SNL" alumnus, are a good example of the former. Brown recently covered a musical re-creation of the life of Jesus perfomed in a small North Carolina town ("The third largest outdoor drama in the sate.") His exclusive interview with the thick-accented Christ regarding the actor's hobbies and dramatic experience contrasted nicely with footage of the actor's onstage performance, where he lip-synched to a tape of the play--performed by Shakespearean actors.
The ad-libbed segment "He Said, Winstead," works because of the chemistry between head writer Lizz Winstead and Kilborn. They throw topics out to each other, conducting an informal sort of "Point-Counterpoint" sendup. The topic of a recent discussion was whether Julia Roberts had actually kissed a woman friend at a biker bar. Before Kilborn had a chance to delve into what this meant for Roberts' sexuality, Winstead pounced on the real trouble--the fact that the drinking establishment was actually a "fake biker bar" where people with big hairdos and Jaguars go--not a real biker bar where Jack Daniels is on tap.
Because "Politically Incorrect," Comedy Central's most successful show to date, was recently snatched away by ABC, "The Daily Show" has become the network's new flagship, and they no doubt are staking a lot on its success. They shouldn't worry--it's off to a strong start, and more importantly, it's not like there's a whole lot of competition out there.
