I’ve found myself feeling this way throughout the life of the show. The quality found in the lineup of correspondents has gradually diminished over time, but a few have been able to find a niche. I really can’t stand most of the current crop of toilet humor goofballs they currently have to choose from, but I love that new girl Kristen Schaal. She isn’t on nearly enough. She excels at lampooning current hot-button topics with a high-brow understanding of the underlying irony of the issue, whereas most of the tenured correspondents on the show seem to elicit laughs by essentially farting mouthwords into the camera, very rarely with a good punchline. And yeah, this new guy Wyatt Cenaf really needs to find another line of work because I think a plastic bag has better comedic timing. Watching him monotonously drone on from the teleprompter and stumble on his words as he sets himself up for a comedic trainwreck is one of the more painful things I’ve seen anyone do on TV in recent memory.
I’d like to see Sarah Vowell (essayist, NPR correspondent, and extremely well read on American history) or, if they could afford him, Seth Green (who’s always struck me as way more intelligent than most celebrities) do spots for them.
I find John Oliver the best of the correspondents. He cracks me up most of the time. I think his timing his near perfect. Jon Hodgeson & Asiv Mandi usually do a good job and Larry Wilmore should be used far more often. He has a really dry sense of humor like Hodgeson that I enjoy. The more franctic ones I don’t really enjoy. Jason Jones has almost never been funny and is usually just painful. Rob Riggle is hit of miss as is Samantha Bee.
I am waiting for them to put Wyatt Cenac to good use!
The high concept comedy that I’ve been watching Wyatt Cenac do in the small clubs around L.A. for the past few years has been BRILLIANT! Particularly work he’s done at GarageComedy and the Upright Citizen’s Brigade Theater.
He has stood out in a major way as one of the most interesting, original, intelligent, comics of the day- with an interesting perspective on every topic he addresses, taking a round-about route to his punchlines.
He is immensely talented- please, Daily Show, allow him to shine!!!
Just to counter any evil effects your perfectly-within-your-rights expression of your own opinion may have had, I will register that I found the book to be laugh-out-loud funny the whole way through. (Though perhaps not to be taken all at one sitting.)
-FrL-
Gah–I’m buying into their calling him Senior Middle East Analyst or whatever! Sorry about that. Yes, Aasif is who I mean (whom?). Mumbai is most definitely not in the MidEast…
Tom Brokaw is on tonight–that should be “special”. I hope Jon questions him about the debate.
Frylock-I read it late at night, and all at once. Not good. I kept thinking-this is some pretty ponderous humor. Then again, my father only has ponderous humor, so it was sort of like reading my dad, which was weird. And not that funny…
They both are working on series in the near future, so they’ll be moving on in the near future. (Sam Bee is a producer of the Jason Jones show).
The Hodgman bit was the post-modern book tour interview. Given that he is actually doing one, I guess, it was perfect.
I like the Apple response to the Microsoft ads featuring a Hodgman look alike too.
Link? I haven’t seen that one–I’ve seen the bake sale ad, which is also funny. Apple just does humor better.