Saturday, November 19, 2005

Daily Show and Colbert Report

Molly asked me to compare the Daily Show and the Colbert Report- as many of you know, I like to talk about the differences between these 2 shows rather obsessively.And I'm not the only member of the family who finds this topic fascinating.

Calvin insists that the Daily Show and the Colbert Report are almost exactly the same. Same content, same format-you know, the fake news thing. I disagree. Jon Stewart's persona on the Daily Show is (I'm assuming) much more closely related to his true personality than Stephen Colbert's right wing pedant pose relates to how he would behave if one had the good luck to run into him at a cocktail party. In other words, Stephen Colbert is playing a role- and that role draws broadly from a close observation of Bill O'Reilly.

Stephen Colbert has to ask all of his pompous yet probing questions himself- while Jon Stewart has a team of crack reporters to do this job for him.

Does Jon Stewart have an eagle on the Daily Show, or does he wave an American flag? I say no! Or does Jon Stewart ever run waving his arms from one part of the set to another? Absolutely not- in fact Jon Stewart rarely even stands up! And neither the new nor old Daily Show set had two rooms.

Although Kym told me not to stress this point- is there ever any red on the Daily Show set? Rarely.

I was at a party recently and was able to turn the conversation to this very topic- I managed to get everyone talking about the Daily Show and then I asked what people thought of the Colbert Report. One of the other guests expressed her extreme distaste for Stephen Colbert and his show, she said he was smug, pompous and stilted. She didn't get the joke- to her Colbert really is Bill O'Reilly! While I avoided speaking to that woman for the rest of the evening, I thought this really does prove my point.

I was, like everyone else, worried that creating a new show might stretch thin the resources of writers and performers, and the quality of both shows would suffer. Luckily, there seems to be plenty of content due to the present political atmosphere to support even more spin-offs.

One last note- did anyone else see Rob Cordry play the convicted sex offender that Larry David invited to a Seder on “Curb Your Enthusiasm”?

2 comments:

Molly said...

Well Done, Well Done. If I were you I would put that woman on Notice!

Kate C. said...

It is really scary that a person is walking around who doesn't get the joke.