just announced on the NYTimes:
Last episode is this Thursday.
I enjoyed it.
I like it better than The Daily Show these days… In fact, I never watch TDS anymore aside from the times I wanted to see Wilmores show and caught the last bit of it.
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Sad. And kind of surprising.
The fuck?
Really sad because Wilmore could have been a better Daily Show replacement than Trevor Noah, and now he can’t be (can he?). I think some of the staff of The Nightly Show held Larry back - specifically Ricky Velez and Grace Para when they showed up on the panel and said a whole nothing of substance over top of interesting guests. Which happened way too much.
I hope Holly Walker, Jordan Carlos and Franchesca Ramsey land somewhere important, and soon, because they are absolute gems and are great at The Fake News. Rory Albanese has been around many different writers’ rooms so he will probably melt into another. Mike Yard, he is pretty good, hopefully he finds more to do than just standup.
I was surprised when I heard this, too. I enjoy it more than any of the other political humor shows, mostly because its format wasn’t just one of poking fun at the other side. It had that, but it had a pretty good political talk show attached to it. Plus Wilmore is a better, more thoughtful host than Maher. Here’s to hoping he gets to start a similar show elsewhere.
Ditto. Trevor Noah is certainly intelligent and funny, but he just doesn’t fit in that role. Plus, at risk of seeming xenophobic or too self-involved, Larry being in his 50s and American makes him somehow more relatable to me.
That said I was never crazy about the format: I wish they’d been more conventional monologue/sketch/interview talk show format, but I suppose they were trying to distance themselves.
Odd how quickly the cancellation takes place.
I’m really sorry to see this cancelled but I guess the fact that I enjoyed it was a bad sign since I’m not the desired demographic. I’m running out of places to go for quality political satire.
double post
I’d agree. I came to enjoy the writing and format of TNS better than Trevor’s show. But i didn’t like the round-table segments and often wouldn’t watch them.
My favorite skit was “Pardon the Integration”. Even though I knew where it was headed, they always kept the laughter going.
I’m going to miss Grace Parra and also her “Nightly Nightly” segments. The one done after Nancy Regan died was comic gold.
Not surprised. I’ve been watching Nightly nightly since the beginning but I was seriously considering stopping. It’s OK and occasionally quite good, but I can get the same political jokes six other places. I’ve never liked the panel segment. They’re supposed to be on serious issues yet the comics keep undercutting them for outrageousness.
Wilmore cut deep when doing black issues on TDS. Jon represented white liberal guilt and cluelessness. It was balanced for the audience because Jon got to play smart at other times. I suspect that the Comedy Central audience is not the platform for a whole show on black issues from a black perspective in which whites are always the butt of the humor. I mentioned in the recent Trevor Noah thread that Jordan Klepper’s clueless-white-guy schtick was annoying because there’s never a non-clueless guy to play off him. Same is true for Wilmore’s show. He played to his wildly enthusiastic studio audience but the folks at home probably often didn’t get it.
psychobunny, have you tried Seth Meyers? He’s gotten really good after his shaky start.
I’m not surprised at all that this show was cancelled; it wasn’t that good.
I enjoyed Mr. Wilmore-as-talking-head but hated the panel discussions; they seemed like MST3K for politics/current events instead of an actual discussion.
Same here.
Many times, I would have the thought, “I realize there is supposed to be a joke there, but it’s not making me laugh”.
Trevor Noah actually does make me laugh.
I agree with many who have posted so far.
•I really enjoyed Wilmore’s opening monologue. It was often much funnier than Noah on TDS and was the strongest part of the show.
• I felt the weakest part of the show were the skits/bits. I thought that Mike Yard, Rory Albanese and Franchesca Ramsey were strong though and should have gotten more to do. But by god, the WORST was Ricky Velez. Why the hell was this guy on the show? He was never funny and never brought anything of substance to the conversation. When I saw him on the panel, even if the subject matter was interesting, I immediately changed the channel.
• As for the panel, I feel if you’re going to do a panel you either commit completely to it or forget the whole thing. Mahr has a panel on for at least 30 minutes and most weeks that’s not nearly enough time to get anything across.
Especially when you have actors or comedians or writers hawking books, all of whom are trying to get a soundbyte in.
[quote=“WordMan, post:1, topic:762932”]
just announced on the NYTimes:
Last episode is this Thursday.
Good Riddance to disgusting horrible show. There may be a god after all
One of the biggest problems with the panel, in my opinion, is that guests were generally booked pretty far in advance, as happens with late night shows. But the show was reacting to the topics of the day, so often you had a guest panelist who didn’t really know a whole lot about whatever issue they happened to be talking about. In that case, the guests can either try to bullshit their way through the discussion, or just crack some weak jokes. Neither one really helps with a substantive conversation. Only relatively rarely did they have a guest who was a genuine expert on current issues, as opposed to celebrities like actors, comedians, or musicians.
Ricky Velez was utterly useless. His shtick seemed to be the apathetic stoner who doesn’t care about anything (or maybe that’s who he really is), but he never contributed anything useful or interesting to the show. Ironically enough, the biggest laugh I ever got from him was a few weeks ago, when he used himself as an example of someone who had managed to get a job, despite being completely unqualified for it! Truer words were never spoken.
I do like several of the other contributors, including Robin Thede and Holly Walker. I think Mike Yard has a lot of talent and is very funny, but I’ve found him a bit more grating recently. He seems to have just a touch of “If I’ve never experienced it, it doesn’t happen” attitude about certain subjects.
On the whole, I’m not so much sorry to see the show end, as I am sorry that the show didn’t live up to its promise, since I think Larry can be very funny and insightful.
I enjoyed his show a lot. I would usually catch up a couple of episodes from the week at one time on Hulu. He mixed comedy and social causes in a balanced way.
I just rewatched an episode of Superstore that Grace Para was in. She was hilarious. Hopefully she gets more work elsewhere.
I’ll miss Robin Thede as well.
I like Maher’s panel format when he has a good panel. Sometimes the format means we get a junk episode if one guest talks over everyone else [Ann Coulter since the politically incorrect days come to mind].
Larry’s panel can be good, but the discussions aren’t as charged as Maher.
I liked the show, and I’m gut-punched that they cancelled it, and so suddenly. I do think that the format was sub-optimal. You can’t be half evening news parody and half panel show. But I enjoyed it anyway. Wilmore deserved better than he got.
This is how I feel, too.
Yeah, too bad.
Wilmore, at times, showed off some really great skills. Quite enjoyable.
They did work out most of the kinks after a while. E.g., “keeping it 100” and other gimmicks during the discussion deserved to go away. Going down to 4 people from 5 was good. But going down to 2 (Wilmore and guest) would have been better.
Mike Yard is amazing. How come this guy wasn’t a star years ago? Many of the others are very good (and a lot better than most TDS folk).
I think the real killer for the show is that he didn’t cover enough topics. He ate up too much air time on race relations. A big topic to him, but you have to mix things up regardless.
We still need him, just to remind us that he hasn’t forgotten about Bill Cosby, if nothing else. The show can’t be that expensive to produce. Maybe he’ll get another chance somewhere online.