The songs were funny enough, but the special as a whole was pointless, badly put together (and not in a cheeky funny way) and just for the most part awkward (not on purpose). And they handled audience laughter in just about exactly the wrong way. It wasn’t filmed live in front of an audience, but was shown post production to an audience and their reactions were recorded. Fair enough, but there’s so much obvious screwing around with the volume of the laughter, and so much oddly timed inappropriate laughter at things that aren’t even trying to be funny, it’s a horrible distraction that kind of ruins most other aspects of the show.
I liked it. The original songs were very well-written and some of them- including the final one, especially (“There Are Much Worse Things To Believe In”)- were even quite sweet. Even the song about Willie Nelson giving pot to Jesus was somewhat sweet in a way, which is surprising given that it’s a song about Willie Nelson giving pot to Jesus. The opening number about making money off of Christmas songs and the sexy song about nutmeg were very funny. Most of the reviews I read stated that the special both paid tribute to and poked fun at old-time Christmas specials- and I say they did so quite well.
You have to realize the whole thing was a send up to those cheezy 70’s and 60’s Christmas specials. The punched up applause when the name of the guest was given and the slight smile and nod of acknowledgment was perfect.
The premise of being trapped away from friends and loved ones on christmas… was just the perfect blend of pap from these specials.
I mean look that teh famous encounter between Bowie and Bing for an example of the real thing Stephen was mocking.
I liked it. You had to realize what he was parodying – the 60s & 70s style “Bob Hope Christmas Specials.”
It was deliberately not in front of a live audience, and the audience reaction throughout was so over-the-top that it was obvious it was not to be taken seriously (didn’t you notice how the applause whenever a visitor was introduced was deliberately fake?). The laughter was supposed to be inappropriate; that was part of the joke.
The jokes were lame, but that was the point. The jokes in that sort of show were *always *lame, and Colbert was deliberately outdoing them in lameness. And there were things like the parody of the Crosby/Bowie “Little Drummer Boy” duet, the way he introduced each person (“Look, it’s country music legend Toby Keith”), the fake bear, the goat, and much more.
Didn’t Toby Keith’s song give you a clue? I’ll admit the subject first irritated me, until I realized that it was so over-the-top in its regard for Christmas that it wasn’t supposed to be taken seriously. Or when Colbert obviously lip synched the opening number?
It was subtle, but if you knew what he was parodying, it was dead on and certainly one of the better parodies around.
The stuff with the applause was weird, but I’m sure it was deliberate. The mixing was too intrustive and noticeable not to have been a joke.
The vibe was odd in that it was probably a lot more like an actual Christmas Special than what a Colbert audience is used to - mostly that audience is too young to have seen a non-parody Christmas Special. But I liked most of the songs, especially Jon Stewart’s and “Peace Love and Understanding.” The Toby Keith song appeared to have a bunch of footage from “Santa Claus Conquers the Martians,” which I got a kick out of. I was much amused by Elvis Costello playing a sort of British stereotype and fighting the bear with his top hat. And for that matter, he played the piano the same way Stephen types on the show.
Yeah, I think the OP was whooshed by Mr. Colbert D.F.A. The special was awkward in the hilarious, intentional way. It was put together very well–you can tell because it looked so bad. Using a real audience and making it sound like canned laughter just adds the surreal cherry to the sundae of parody goodness. We even all learned a lesson in the end–Stephen Colbert is Santa Claus!
You guys really think I didn’t understand what the special was parodying? Of course I did. But the things I complained about in the OP aren’t part of that parody. There is no tradition saying there was inappropriately edited audience laughter in 50’s through 70’s style Christmas specials. :dubious::rolleyes:
In fact, from what little I’ve been able to find online to remind myself with, it appears there typically wasn’t a studio audience on these things. (But I didn’t find much.)
And while I didn’t complain about any purported “lameness” of the jokes (though someone responding to my OP seems to think I did) I did think the timing of the jokes was terribly off–the whole thing seemed rushed–and no I don’t think this was done for laughs. Badly timed jokes can make for a metajoke of their own, but this kind of thing is not Colbert’s kind of thing. (We go to Al Franken for that particular kind of humour.) Also, I would be skeptical of a claim that jokes in the old Crosby et al specials were typically poorly performed and rushed, so typically that it would have to be part of any parody of those specials. (But hey, find me the youtube clips or something and prove me wrong.)
The rushed effect was exacerbated by the half-canned laughter. The forcedness of it made it difficult for me to process the humour because I was too busy processing the laughter.
I was thinking as I was watching it that the timing would have been better, the humour more available, if the laugh track were missing. I doubt it’s a coincidence that the DVD actually lets me do just that–turn the laugh track off. It appears that one or more people importantly involved in production of this thing agreed with my judgment that the special minus the laughter would be particularly worth watching.
In an out-of-character* interview with Terry Gross, Colbert emphasizes the genuineness of the audience reactions (and I believe him–a hyped up audience watching things on a big screen together with a big crowd is going to laugh a lot and more uproariously than the same people would alone or with a few people at home) and does not in the slightest characterize the laugh track as in any way part of a joke. That doesn’t preclude the possibility that it’s part of a joke, of course, but since the interview did involve explanations of the sources of humour in the show, I’d have expected some mention or at least winking concerning the audience reaction. There was none.
I’d bet money if I had any that the audience reaction thing was Executive Meddling.
Since it wasn’t clear in my OP, I’ll make it clear here. I thought the songs–each and every one of them–were hilarious. And I thought most of the ideas in the show were really funny. I just thought they were poorly executed.
Nah, I’d bet the audience was laughing hilariously the whole time, and that this was part of the problem–they wouldn’t shut up. So the sound engineers had to edit them. And so the whole audience thing backfired.
(BTW I did think the “applause at the entrance of a celebrity thing” was a joke. I was not talking about that, I was talking about the half-canned laughter.)
Here, check out this example of Christmas cheese from 1977. Listen to the “audience reaction” Eerily similar in how the laughter rises and falls in an identical way with each awful joke.
Here’s something I found that puts very well the way I was feeling about the thing. I agree with everything but the very first and very last sentence (though the first sentence deals with a matter of empirical fact which I admit I may just have wrong…):
Every single time someone was introduced, there was a short clip of utterly fake applause. There is absolutely no way that wasn’t intended as a joke – that sort of applause track hasn’t been used by network executives since the 1970s.
I take it you hadn’t read the whole thread when you posted that.
-FrL-
ETA: On re-reading the thread, I see my reference to this was much less prominent than I recall. I could swear I explicitly addressed this somewhere, but I didn’t. Instead, all I’ve actually included is the passage quoted in post #17, along with my own comment that I agree. Specifically, in that passage, the reviewer says the cheering-for-guest-appearances is a good joke, the rest of the canned laughter not so much.
