No, I think we can critique his show by just making reference to Samantha Bee and John Oliver; doesn’t mean he’s on the right track, it just means there are any number of people who’d presumably be better at hosting The Daily Show. (I remember when John Oliver did host The Daily Show for a stretch; it was awesome.)
I agree, I hate that shit. It puts me in a bad mood when Trevor does it, or Colbert on his new show. Just calm the fuck down, it’s late night and no one needs that kind of energy. I honestly don’t know what they’re trying to accomplish. I don’t care if they stand up or sit down, but I don’t tune in to see them dance around. Samantha Bee doesn’t do it, John Oliver doesn’t either. No one would be upset if Trevor just started the show with a bit of normal conversation. (“I’m not watching this anymore, he’s not dancing around enough at the beginning” said no one ever)
I’m eternally grateful to know that I’m not the only one who is driven batshit crazy by the late night hosts dancing around in the opening. It’s why I gave up on Colbert after about a month of his new show, and it always puts me off when Noah does it, too.
I’m still watching, and have seen every episode of TDS and TNS. Wilmore’s clearly better than Noah, but that’s damning with fain praise. Both have gotten steadily less funny over the last couple months after starting out okay. I’m starting to think about not watching.
Samantha Bee’s show is shockingly funny, if only because she was my least favorite correspondent. I’d rate her show just behind Oliver, barely.
Of possible note is that I regularly skip various parts of the Comedy Central shows, and always have. I always skipped Jon Stewart’s interviews, and I always skipped Colbert’s guest spots, where he’d bring out some celebrity in the first or second act to do a bit. (Colbert’s interviews were good, though.) For Trevor Noah I skip both the interviews and most of the correspondent pieces. For Larry Wilmore I skip the inside-joke opening (which I hate) and most of the round table discussions. I do miss his original stand-up cold openings; that was the best 30 seconds of his show by far.
I bring that up mainly to point out that I watch every minute of both Oliver and Bee on their respective shows.
If I had to grade them all…
Jon Oliver’s LWT: A+
Samantha Bee’s Full Frontal: A
Colbert Report: A-
Jon Stewart’s TDS: B+
Jon Oliver’s TDS: B
Larry Wilmore’s TNS: C (was a C+, but is fading)
Trevor Noah’s TDS: D (was a C, but it’s gone noticeably downhill)
…and while it’s unfair to compare TDS and TNS to weekly shows, I would be so much happier if Noah did a weekly show on Mondays and Wilmore did a weekly show on Wednesdays. (Oliver is on Sunday and Bee is on Tuesday.)
That would be sweet.
Haven’t stayed up that late to watch any of them since John S left (but they showed his reruns the next day at pm).
Just wanted to pop back in here and say thanks to the people who said good things about Sam Bee’s Full Frontal. I watched a couple of the most recent eps via on demand and found the show to be really funny. In fact, I’d agree that she’s kicking the shit out of Noah and TDS. I guess I didn’t realize how much that show was missing the mark until I compared it to FF. I expected Last Week Tonight to be funnier than Noah’s version of TDS, because I always found Oliver to be good for laughs, but Bee was always more hit or miss. She’s stepped up her game on FF. I’ve set a series recording on the DVR for her show. I’m not ready to cancel the recording for TDS, but…we’ll see.
Yeah, we kind of gave up and are just watching the Nightly Show now. We did tune in to see Lindsay Graham, because we couldn’t miss that, but otherwise…
I wasn’t crazy about the first couple of episodes, but this week’s was good all the way through.
I watch John Oliver’s show on Youtube.
I’m really liking Trevor Noah. He is obviously a very smart, very funny guy; I’d agree that his interviewing skills are still weak. We saw him take a bit of a swing at someone recently (I forget who it was); I think he’s just not comfortable (and possibly not knowledgeable) enough yet to really get down and dirty with any of his interview subjects, and yes, he does need more serious guests.
Hey, did you know Donald Trump wants to bang his daughter? And for the record, I like his dancing. 
I don’t really watch it much, but I still follow the Facebook page and really feel like the marketing has changed. Sometime around when Noah took over, the marketing shifted towards this obnoxious buzzfeedy feelgood zinger model. They all word for word could be any random quote your slightly annoying friend you occasionally wish you didn’t agree with would share.
I’ve watched a couple of segments here and there, and Noah is okay, but he feels a lot less biting, and it feels like the show doesn’t really take the media to task anymore in the same way, and rather focuses on writing pieces on issues that are meant to make you feel good for believing the right things, rather than inspecting the issue in any depth. A lot of times when I watch the show, I feel like I could’ve gotten about as much content by clicking on some ad-ridden progressive clickbait site filled with gifs.
Of course, Stewart could be this way, and the show had a lot of filler. However, it felt like there was less of a focus on it, and he was more interested in just showing you what he(/his writing team) felt was broken in our society, rather than congratulating you for having the right viewpoints LOL LIKE AND SHARE IF YOU AGREE!!!
I’m still watching and enjoying the show.
The good news is that Desi Lydic is back from maternity leave and she’s been wonderful.
She still doesn’t have a lot of experience but I’m starting to think she’s on track to being the best correspondent after Jessica Williams. Yeah, the current crop of correspondents isn’t great so that may seem like faint praise but I’m saying I think she’s got the potential to significantly outshine the others and actually be quite good.