By Alyssa Katz--The Nation
December 23, 1996
Comedy Central was also the farm team that launched Politically Incorrect With Bill Maher, the always entertaining mock McLaughlin Group that brings together comedians, politicians who want to be as well-liked as comedians, oddball celebrities more insightful than all the other panelists put together, and an array of familiar pundits incapable of turning down national airtime. (Politically Incorrect-which with at least one panelist of color on almost every show has been anything but-begins airing on ABC this January, in the slot after Nightline). Kids in the Hall (proof once and for all that Canadians have a sense of humor), Absolutely Fabulous, the much-missed Mystery Science Theater 3000 and the wry Dr. Katz: Professional Therapist (no relation) have all roosted in Comedy Central's coop.
In that subversive tradition comes The Daily Show (Monday-Thursday, 11 P.M.), the replacement for Politically Incorrect and Comedy Central's latest attempt to do its own spin on Letterman and Leno. In the channel's infancy, The Allan Havey Show took some steps toward rethinking the talk show--its most memorable feature was the "Audience of One," a lone observer who sat like a diner in an empty restaurant--before being sunk by a morose host and minimalist format. Low energy scarcely plagues The Daily Show, a wicked parody of Regis and Kathie Lee, Entertainment Tonight and E!, CNN lifestyle segments, smarmy local news and, of course, late-night talk shows--in short, the green algae known as infotainment.
In a fleet half-hour, host Craig Kilborn, a former anchor on ESPN's similarly wiseacre SportsCenter, careers through a dada delivery of the day's news (interrupting himself for updates later in the show) and a chat with a B-list celebrity. The interviews are capped, in loving homage to the TV genre infotainment helped destroy, by a short quiz consisting of questions such as "How high is the sky?" (Bill Murray is the reigning champ, with a five-for-five score). The asides, many and brief, include such tidbits as "A Moment for Us," in which our host reveals intimate details of his personal life: "I like to go home with a lot of literature...listen to a little Sergio Mendes."
An able squad of field reporters takes a cue from Michael Moore's TV Nation, scoping the country for off-the-wall stories for which the term "human interest" seems sadly inadequate. What can be said about a retired cop from Long Beach, California, who has undergone seven plastic surgeries to make himself look like Tom Arnold? A tendency toward the scatological was epitomized by a reporter's visit to a boar-semen farm, during which she was coerced into helping bring a pig, on camera, to orgasmic hog heaven. A week earlier, the same correspondent tried a stint as a waitress at Hooters, providing sardonic commentary on the sense of self-worth she felt serving drooling men while wearing falsies under a skimpy tank top. The Daily Show was created by two women, Lizz Winstead and Madeleine Smithberg, and it shows.
Some features take pieces of media detritus and hold them up for the world to ponder: "Actual Hotline Recording," has presented taped advice from a North Carolina hospital on treatment for ingrown toenails, while the televangelists whose video clips are featured in the weekly review "GodStuff" bear an ungodly resemblance to stand-up comics. All this--and more, much more--is glued together with an endless stream of mock filler fluff, as when one of the reporters exclaims, to wrap up a deliberately meaningless discussion with Kilborn, "Thanks, Craig, you manly white heterosexual." It all makes for a fine parody of infotainment's nonstop chatter, that insistently upbeat language that attempts to speak to as many people as possible while offending none, with the inevitable result of making viewers feel anything from bored to embarrassed to despairing. When, at the end of each Daily Show, Kilborn didactically asks, "What did we learn today?" and proceeds to draw trivial morals from the proceedings ("We learned that Pamela Lee is breaking up her famil-li-ly"), he perfectly expresses just how infantilizing happy-TV can be.
Kilborn's smugness may be suffocating at first viewing, and the irony thicker than Anna Karenina, but it soon becomes clear that the insufferable-host shtick is just part of the send-up, a dis on the outsize stage ego of a Letterman or Conan O'Brien. The news segments use a motley array of video clips that reach beyond Saturday Night Live's tired "Weekend Update" and into the satellite-dish stratosphere. Kilborn occasionally precedes his news with a friendly warning to his viewers: "Please do not use The Daily Show as your only source of information." On a busy day, I often do. Part of the fun is figuring out where reality leaves off and nonsense begins (it can be surprisingly hard to tell).
In its first months of existence, The Daily Show had a live audience of none--just the racous cackle of head writer Winstead and the show's other staff in the background. It was kind of charming, a quite space in which to meditate on the spectacle of so much information. But the night after Election Day, in The Daily Show's first airing in Politically Incorrect's shoes, all that changed: A live audience now dutifully cheers on the proceedings. The first few shows were a disaster, as the hoots of revved-up spectators at even the least successful punch lines made The Daily Show become the thing it hates the most: a mindless celebration of media inanity. Kilborn and Winstead, who occassionally appears on the set as his sidekick, didn't look very happy about the new mandate. But with some solid writing and a restored sense of rhythm, things have already gotten back in the groove. As Kilborn said in an on-air ID the night things seemed to turn around, "You're watching The Daily Show find itself."
