First off, I am not gay, and dont really have any close friends that are, so I cant say I am offended per se, but is anyone else getting sick of CF’s “I am a huge flaming queen” routine that has come to dominate his monolouge on a nightly basis?
References to cross-dressing, gay double entendres, mock self outings and the like have become an obsession with him, and I wonder if anyone is offended, or, like me, just sick to death of this bit that has been run into the ground to the 10th power by now…
When Craig first got his show, he was fresh and unique, self depreciating and generally the funniest person on television. Now he relies on the same few stale gimmicks night after night, and I am usually forced to change channels before I can get 5 min. into his show.
Does anyone else feel the same way? Am I missing something?
I know it must be hard to come up with new stuff night after night, but Furguson is stuck mining a bit that was never funny in the first place, and it has become beyond stale, if not outright offensive.
EDIT
I guess I should add that Craig Furguson is not gay (as far as I know) and was recently married for the third time…
I think he’s hilarious and I love the kidding about being gay. It’s part of his schtick. David Letterman has the top ten list, Jay Leno had headlines, Craig F. has teh gay. And e-mails.
Sorry, OP, Craig Ferguson is a genius. He’s allowed to fall back on running gags once in a while in exchange for not slavishly following cue cards like most late night personalities.
Besides, if he hears people are tired of the gay shtick he might fire the leather boy, and that would be sad.
I can’t remember what it is now but I remember him getting a complaint in an early review for repeating some silly bit of shtick. So he made sure to run that piece of shtick every night for a year.
It’s sometimes fun and often tiresome. Letterman ran Is This Anything and Will This Float into the ground for years upon years and only recently has abandoned it, long after I abandoned him. Conan’s repetition of a thousand tics similarly drove me away. Leno actually had the fewest repetition tics. He’d drive a joke for a week and then drop it.
Ferguson isn’t quite into repetition hell yet. His monologues have been more tiresome than inspired lately but when they inspired they’re truly great. And when he starts flying with a guest he’s the best there is.
The price you pay for the five show a week grind is repetition to fill in time between the good stuff. If the time between gets too long, I’ll walk. The gay stuff is stupid and worse, lazy. I’d hoped he stop it after he got married. Sometimes you can almost physically see the mental pause that he goes through remembering that he’s married and the jokes don’t fit as well as they used to. This gives me hope.
Maybe that’s what bothers me so much about this. When Craig Ferguson first got his show, I liked him SO much more than Letterman, Leno, Kimmel or Conan. (although I felt Conan’s first few years were typically very good, if often uneven.)
Thses days, Conan is (to me) unwatchable, largely due to constantly running a once funny bit into the ground, much like Ferguson is currently doing.
The nature of his (Craig Ferguson) present obsession (the gay shtick) dosent offend me, but it certainly makes me want to change the channel in a hurry…
That said, I am glad that others are still enjoying Craig’s show, as I would be willing to bet he is a pretty fun guy to hang out with, and generally an all around decent person.
The problem with Late Night is they have an hour to fill every weeknight of every day of the year, sometimes for decades. Not including vacation days.
That’s a lot of time to fill with entertainment. Nobody has that much originality in them. It’s impossible. Therefore, running gags and repetitive schtick is the only recourse.
Craig is at least clever enough to mix it up a lot better than others do, and to go onto new stuff regularly. And let’s face it, sometimes recurring jokes are all part of the fun, live audiences especially seem to like them.
He does do an opening, but he’s only been doing that since April 2008. The puppets are in it once in awhile, but it is usually just him talking and goofing off.
I LOVE it when Craig uses the puppets! I’m almost disappointed when he doesn’t use them!
I like it best when he’s lip syncing to some song and they pop up from the bottom of the screen. I don’t know why it’s so funny. Maybe it’s because I have a warped sense of humor and that’s something I’d do to entertain someone when in a goofy mood…
You’re not suffering from homophobia you’re suffering from overexposure.
Sometimes it’s safer (or easier) to get a fair number of laughs consistantly rather than take a chance on a huge number of laughs or perhaps the reverse - none.
