Agreed. Jon Batiste is a brilliant, amazing musician, but a space cadet as a sidekick. He just seems so stoned and loose - everything Colbert zings his way just sinks in and disappears.
I watched The Colbert Report and shifted to DVRing the Late Show, as they were hoping that audience would. I find Colbert fun, but still see kinks like the lack of repartee.
Compared to the other late night shows, is Colbert’s still coming across as more politically voiced? More ascerbic?
I just want to clarify that I said nothing about Jon Batiste being a bad musician or a bad person. I just don’t think that he - or any other sidekick - has a place on Colbert’s show. Colbert didn’t need a sidekick on Comedy Central and, IMHO, suffers for having one now. But, this would be just as true with any other sidekick - not just Jon Batiste, who may be a completely reasonable human being trapped in a crappy role.
Repeat for Ed & Doc and Andy and so forth. May be very nice people. But, I have never understood what (if anything) they brought to the shows.
I wasn’t trying to imply that, sorry if it came across that way.
Can Colbert carry a show? Sure - he did it for 8 or so years. But when he turns to Batiste and says “Hey Jon - so how was your weekend?” and Jon pauses, thinks for a minute and slowly says “it was good, Man - it was good.” you see the energy sucked out of the give-and-take. There’s no “take.”
Batiste is a total dope. No reason to mince words about it. It’s sort of funny in a way just watching him be a dope once in a while, but the audience is definitely laughing at him, not with him. The band’s music is actually pretty good, although that has little to no bearing on why I watch the show.
I’ve been watching it because I like Colbert, but I stand by what I said from the outset: that TCR was way better and funnier, and he’s sacrificed too much in an effort to appeal to a wider audience here.
The sidekick brings something pretty obvious, I would have thought. Some jokes and commentary just work better in a dialogue rather than a monologue. Batiste is pretty bad at it though.
Regarding the sidekick, I really liked the rapport between Letterman and Shaffer, and I think Shaffer definitely added to the show. The same applies to Andy Rickter with Conan. I don’t know who should help Colbert, but he needs someone out there with him. It might be a short lived job, though.
But how much of the rapport with the sidekick is the result of having worked with them for a long time? Perhaps as Colbert and Batiste work together for a longer time, they’ll develop a rhythm.
Definitely not. I was watching it tonight and it’s just gotten worse with him. He’s obviously miked, because we keep hearing him laugh and make these comments during Stephen’s monologues, but they never cut to him or acknowledge him in any way while he’s doing that. Just ignore him completely. Which is super awkward and uncomfortable. Tonight especially so - after they did the introduction and Stephen sat down at his desk, we hear Batiste repeatedly saying “Jackpot! Jackpot! Jackpot!” for no reason literally 6 or 7 times like a fucking autistic kid until Stephen has to start talking over him to get into his next bit.
Mind you, I’m not suggesting they do cut to him like Leno did constantly with his black bandleader/sidekick to show him laughing at the jokes (that was also bad). I’m saying someone needs to tell him to shut the hell up. He seems to be a good musician, and I actually like the band overall, but man that guy is dumber than a sack of hammers.
By the same token, they have done video bits together, or Batiste did one solo about his outfits, and they were charming. Batiste seems like a great guy, and Colbert is working on him.
I am complete surprised how many “new show” problems are still occurring. E.g., they wanted to do a spinning wheel thing on the ceiling but it wasn’t ready in time. So they put one on the desk “operated” by a stage hand. Things went very, very badly. It was a mess of a bit.
And the bigger questions is: Why not postpone the bit to a later show when they had it working right?
The obvious answer was that they had nothing to replace it with so they were stuck going with it. That’s not a good sign. A show like this should have lots of ready-to-go bits they can toss in.
It continues to not go well. The re-shoots, especially when coming back from commercial and something went wrong right away, are still noticeable. Not that they shouldn’t occur, but that Colbert has no clue how to handle it.
(Conan, OTOH, sometimes does behind-the-scene bits where such mistakes and fixes are shown. I hadn’t known before that there had been anything odd going on.)
The best recurring bit is the “Did you ever wonder?” thing. But that depends on the guest. Kermit was great. Some others weren’t.
The “Hungry For Power Games” and the one with the big fur hat are terrible and need to go. Too much time is wasted on extraneous stuff. Comedy is about timings and these bits don’t have it.
He is interacting more with his crew and that’s a good thing. OTOH, he tried to do a bit with Rupert Jee at the Hello Deli and it stunk. Colbert clearly doesn’t have Letterman’s knack for such things.
(I gotta lot of complaints. It’s hard to remember them all in one post.;))
A telling sign about Batiste’s live show skills: Mavis Staples was a recent guest. During the interview she mentioned several songs. Including singing a few lines from some of them. For exactly one of them did Batiste lightly play a few notes. But it was too little, too late and it went badly. And this was an song from her new album that Batiste actually played on!
He is far removed from a Paul Shaffer type performer who can instantly start playing full-on almost any song you can think of.
I’ve only been watching this sporadically, but I’ve been trying to tune in more lately. I think I’m just kind of burnt out with late night talk shows in general, though I’ll still tune in if I notice that a celeb I like is appearing on one. The departures of Letterman and Stewart and the end of The Colbert Report were a big blow to my late night tv habits.
From what I’ve seen, I agree that the band leader is still painfully awkward when he has to interact with Colbert. I do really like Colbert’s interviews with his guests. He has a style that is sometimes kind of playfully antagonistic. He can carry out an intelligent conversation instead of just fawning and giggling like Fallon.
I haven’t caught too many of his recurring bits, though I confess I do like the big floating hat one, silly as it is.
I saw that and actually thought it was good how they dealt with it improvisationally, and that creates some humor on its own. It’s comedy; the point is not to be slick and polished at every turn but to be funny and entertaining. It seems a bizarre reaction to say, “oh man, they had a technical issue, what a disaster!”
I caught that episode. That was the worst fuckup I’ve ever seen on a show, especially one that’s taped. Colbert kept trying and failing to bring the failure to a joke of its own but they hadn’t given themselves enough time even for that. You’re absolutely right that they should have pulled another bit. They panicked and the flop sweat glistened.
The big fur hat worked when John Cleese also did it. Craig Ferguson was on an episode with the bit and they should have brought him in. Did they not think of it? Did they ask and he didn’t want to? Either is a bad sign.
The vibe I’m getting here is Pee Wee Herman. Nobody ever wanted Paul Rubens after that character and he’s been reduced to recreating it. Is that Colbert’s fate?
Colbert has improved in the ratings and is now #2 behind Fallon in late night.
Don’t get too excited, though. Overall ratings for late night are so low that one really good guest on one night could change the season-long standings.
I agree that Colbert desperately needs a sidekick with a contrasting personality, but it probably isn’t going to happen. The show seems to be built around the “Stephen-the-egomaniacal-blowhard” persona, and adding another cast member would undermine that. I’m actually surprised that Colbert isn’t doing the opening voiceover anymore, since that was part of the illusion that Colbert was doing everything himself.
One of the things I hate about the show is the huge, ostentatious set with those stupid ceiling projections. Bad enough that it’s overwhelmingly orange and blue (a color scheme that is already done to death in the entertainment world), but it looks like the Ed Sullivan Theatre has been transformed into the Temple of Stephen.
I really miss Letterman and his sense of ironic detachment. I had high hopes for this show and looked forward to seeing the real Stephen Colbert. Well, evidently Colbert is congenitally incapable of dropping his Colbert Report character. Or maybe there is no “real Stephen Colbert.”
Didn’t read thread, but I’ll still bet four pesos nobody mentioned the creepiness of Jon Batiste (or the rest of his bandmates for that matter) looking directly into the camera, especially when they do a little shimmy or something equally um…no - don’t do that.
Doc never did, nor Paul…only the esteemed Mr. Reginald Watts can get away with it.
Reggie Watts is an outstanding bandleader/sidekick. Maybe even better than Paul Shaffer.
I’m not crazy about James Corden, but he did a vastly better job assembling his show than Colbert did.
Whoa, I had no idea Corden actually had Reggie Watts on his show (I’ve never watched it)! He was hilarious in Comedy Bang! Bang! Colbert and Corden should definitely switch band leaders.
I’d say that Colbert is too “establishment” now for someone as offbeat as Watts. Not that Corden is way-out-of-left-field-Rusell-Brand or anything, but I can imagine The Late Show producers’ you-know-whats puckering up a little at RW.
Yes, Watts ruled in Comedy Bang! Bang! I wish Aukerman and he still had it going. 
Especially when Bob Ducca gets interviewed - absolutely golden.
With Corden, RW does the “here’s” announcing, as well as band/leader sidekick.
Digression - speaking of talk show bands - Seth Myers’s band plays the most flaccid, pedestrian, somnambulistic, going-through-the-motions, weak, yawn-worthy talk-show theme I’ve ever heard.
Did I mention weak?