I don’t watch much anymore.
I always skipped the interviews. And I have never liked the ‘correspondents’. It was all about Stewart skewering the talking heads. I loved watching Stewart do it. Oliver is great at it also. haven’t see Samantha Bee yet.
But Trevor…he is funny. He’s just a little too…nice. He doesn’t seem to have an edge or a bite. He may well develop one, given time.
What he needs is an enemy. He needs Glen Beck to take a swipe at him!
I’m still watching. On the plus side, Noah does much better impressions and doesn’t have Stewart’s tics. On the minus side Noah isn’t nearly as good an interviewer, especially for politicians.
And the correspondents have been improving.
Yeah the guests don’t match my demographic, but if they did TDS would be off the air in weeks. And that obscure black comic from last night is on CNN and was on Fresh Air also yesterday or the day before.
There just isn’t enough time for anything, anymore. I gave up on Trevor Noah after the first week.
I’m trying to keep up with Steven Colbert, but can’t do that even with just watching the monologue and main interview.
Yeah, another one who’s drifted off since Stewart left. Can’t quite put my finger on it, but Noah comes off as…a bit callow, I guess. The guests never seem to be anyone I much care about. I like Jessica Williams and Roy Wood Jr., but the other correspondents are meh as well (IMO).
What little late -night viewing time I allot myself goes to Colbert, maybe two nights a week. I don’t currently subscribe to anything that would make Oliver’s or Bee’s shows available.
I still watch, and think Noah’s improving. At least his writers are getting better.
But I can’t watch his interviews. I couldn’t care less about the latest YouTube sensation or rap-star-turned-actor or unfunny-doctor-turned-unfunny-sitcom-star. I’m definitely no longer within the show’s demographics, so I guess it’s my problem.
Even his “moments of zen” are not as zen-like as Stewart’s.
Still watching, but sometimes let several episodes back up on the DVR before watching them. The urge to be “timely” about watching it is long gone.
I record TDS and TNS as one block. Larry Wilmore is just flat out so much better it’s a shame he isn’t hosting TDS. (His recent retro episode had a lot of great stuff.) OTOH, his show has some structural problems, esp. the roundtable format at the end.
Trevor Noah is just too much of a second tier person to pull this off. And the correspondent pool is still a ways from jelling. If this wasn’t an election year with Donal Trump, it would be unwatchable.
Does he spend a great deal of the show talking about Fox news? If not I might give it a try.
I watch when the timing works out for me. I was tired of Stewart by the end of his run, so I was happy to see new blood on the show. I like Trevor’s style for the most part.
I can’t stand the correspondents. Never really could. There’s only so much of “look at me, I’m an idiot and going to say stupid things” that I can take.
That.
What really gets my naugahyde hairs is (and I’ve whined about this same thing with the newest Colbert iteration) is how he’ll deliver a just-below-somewhat-relatively-crappy attempt at something funny, with the producers occasionally forgetting to use the “laugh” sign, hence crickets, and then TN’ll force this totally contrived chuckle to somehow deflect the silence, but only further belabouring the discomfort. He’s gotta tighten that up for this hombre.
Yeah agreed with a number of folks saying that Willmore would’ve been a better TDS host.
John and Sam - rock on.
Exactly. Maybe TN and Shkreli can have at’her. Or Mitch McConnell. Or Charles Krauthammer.
me want some jon stewart again
You’ll know that Trevor Noah’s on the right track, when we can critique his show without making reference to Jon Stewart. So far, not.
Love it.
I still record them, but I seldom watch them lately. Trevor is funny, I’ve just taken a break from all the political stuff.
I do hope to get back to the show soon.
I’ve watched every episode but the most recent. Sure, it’s not as good as Jon, and I really envy people in a parallel universe who still have him and Colbert doing their CC shows for this election, but I like it fine. I watch Bee and Oliver and am finding I do like their shows better, but a solid B+ next to the valedictorian and salutatorian is nothing to be embarrassed about.
But don’t critiques quite often have references?
Regarding being on the right track, I find he’s certainly less stumbly than he was at the beginning, and his i-viewing is getting less skittish and more assured and fluid.
And especially if he replaced JS, I can’t see how referencing would be avoidable, for the most part.
I agree. I find that if I miss Noah’s TDS I don’t really regret it, but I make sure to catch Wilmore’s opening on TNS for sure! (I still think he should eliminate the panel portion or have it occasionally. It’s really not working for me. If they discuss something that’s trivial, I don’t care what they say, but when they discuss something of merit I wish they had more time)
Noah just doesn’t seem to have that edge to handle political humor. Wilmore, Bee, Oliver all have it, but Trevor is just too jovial. And he REALLY has to stop laughing at his own jokes. It comes across as amateurish and annoying.
What I’ve really noticed on Noah’s TDS is the guest portion. I’m not sure if it’s a mandate from Comedy Central or maybe it’s because Noah’s not into American politics as much, but he has far too many celebrity guests plugging upcoming TV shows or movies than Stewart ever had. Stewart had more authors, more political figures while Trevor has a bunch of Comedy Central celebrities plugging their shows.
I still watch TDS, and I watch The Nightly Show as well.
I found it interesting that both shows recently made changes to the way they open the episode. Wilmore used to do a lead-in opening with him standing in front of a screen cracking wise on the “headlines” of what would be covered on the show. Then he would go to the desk and start the first segment. That has now disappeared; the show now opens cold with the title sequence going right to Larry at the desk.
The weird thing is, TDS and Noah made a parallel change, but almost in the opposite direction: TDS still opens cold with the title sequence, but lately Noah does most of the first segment standing up, away from the desk. Sometimes he sits for the second segment, other times he doesn’t.
I’m assuming they changed the Nightly Show opening because they didn’t want the two shows going back to back with basically the same beginning, with the hosts doing a stand-up segment to start the show, because it would look too similar airing back-to-back.
What I think might be the interesting, somewhat hidden meaning in Noah’s change is that it may indicate that he was not comfortable doing the show from the desk like Stewart did. His newer opening segments, with him standing up to present the piece, are literally that: more like him doing stand-up comedy than presenting fake news. I don’t know if that change simply reflects his discomfort with doing the show the old way, or if it’s trying to change things because the ratings are not going well. (I tried to search for ratings info on TDS, and saw some stuff about ratings dropping in a big way, but all those articles were dated to 2015; I didn’t see anything on recent performance.)
I do know that I miss Wilmore’s old opening; I thought it set up the show nicely, and the music they used as a bed had a driving beat to it that made the topics of the jokes seem more immediate and urgent, something the viewer wanted to get into with Wilmore. The cold opening seems more like the show limping to a start than previously.
In other words, both shows seem to have plateaued, at best, and arguably TDS is getting weaker. I still usually get good laughs out of the first segment on both shows, and the Nightly’s second segment usually works, too. But that’s about it.
The guests on both shows are problematic; usually it’s someone I’ve never heard of, with very hit or miss results–either interesting, intelligent and/or funny, but just as often a borderline imbecile (the rappers tend not to come off very well). And most folks here are right, I think, that Noah is not much of an interviewer at this point; lots of gushing, very little substance. And it’s probably another bad sign for TDS that so many of the interview guests are Z-list names; the contrast with the Stewart days is stark. Then, you’d see people with stature, an actress like Scarlett Johansson or Anne Hathaway coming on to plug a movie, or a senator showing up to plug a book or do a little propagandizing. Not anymore. The lack of big names getting booked may be a sign that the general buzz out there is that the show has the stink of death on it and that it’s not worth it to even try to use it as a promotional venue. That may become a self-fulfilling assessment, as lack of big name guests drives more of the audience away, which lessens the show’s appeal still further, etc.
I’ll keep watching out of habit, for whatever laughs there are to be had there (and for the news-gathering aspect, to some extent), but I won’t be surprised if by the end of the year we start hearing rumblings that one or both shows will be on the way out. And I’m not sure they’ll really be missed.
I like both Stewart and Noah equally. Very different, but about equal for me. Now Wilmore, I think he’s a huge improvement over Colbert, and I think Colbert himself is a huge improvement on late night.
I must be more hip than average, because I know a higher percentage of Noah’s guests than I did Stewart’s.
Well, last week deleted unwatched the most recent episode, and cancelled the series recording setting. Feels weird after all these years.
Petty thing about the opening - yeah, didn’t need TN to do the JS scribbling schtick, but I always thought TN looked silly hopping up an down during the opening.
Daily Show with Jon Stewart was must see TV for me, rarely missed an episode. Noah is 1-2 times per week. He’s fine but he isn’t must see.
Now to be fair, Jon wasn’t must see at first either, he was immediately far better than Craig Kilborn but he wasn’t must see for me until the 2000 election coverage really got going and some of the dud correspondents moved on or were reduced in use. Mo Rocca comes to mind.
Noah might never be as good, that should not be shocking, Jon Stewart was awesome. Maybe the best ever at this type of humor and observation. But hey, Noah is already way better than Craig Kilborn.
I rarely missed a Jon Stewart episode. I didn’t make it a week with Trevor.
It’s difficult to explain, and even I don’t fully understand it, but I’m just not that into him. It’s like I don’t have the energy to commit.
Maybe it’s not him, it’s me.
mmm