TV Review: The Late Show with Stephen Colbert: Premiere
In one of the student eating / study areas at my college, they have CBS on during the day. In between classes, I was watching The Price is Right and happened to see that Stephen Colbert's first night was last night. I figured I ought to watch it because: 1. it's TV history (or something), and 2. we watched him a lot during lunch at work, and he's a pretty funny guy. So I stayed up late to watch the premiere, and decided to give it a review, mostly because of the metatextual content I saw. That metacommentary on talk shows and bringing people together were the two big themes of the night, which is a pretty interesting thing for a talk show, but certainly in line with the sort of humor he and Jon Stewart had at Comedy Central. Unfortunately, this review won't be as funny, and since it was written in my head last night, and split between two sessions this morning, it may not even be good at all. So have fun, if you ever read it.
The next bit of commentary happened during George Clooney's appearance. One thing Colbert and Clooney addressed was the fact that celebrities (particularly talk show hosts and their guests) are supposed to act like they know each other and get along famously (ha!) despite being pushed together by circumstance, and perhaps having nothing at all in common. Colbert gave Clooney a wedding gift of a Tiffany & Co. paperweight engraved with the phrase "I don't know you." He told Clooney to regift it to the next celebrity that Clooney has to pretend to be friendly with, despite being only a passing acquaintance (I don't know why, but it really appeals to me to think of this little paperweight actually getting passed around the celebrity community, from one not-friend to another).
Clooney and Colbert also addressed the fact that most talk show guests have some sort of project to push when they appear, and here the metacommentary was not undermined: Clooney actually had nothing to push. Instead, they did a funny bit with fake clips from Decision Strike, a movie about the Secretary-General of the UN, played by Clooney, being (basically) James Bond. Perhaps because I was reading so much into the rest of the show, I thought that this could be taken as a commentary on just how not James Bond-esque the job is. I suppose it could also be part of the "bringing people together" theme - rather than having Clooney play a single state's suave secret agent, he was the leader of the (theoretically) premiere international organization dedicated to a peaceful and united human race.
While the first show has these little spots pointing out the absurdity or deficiencies in what are rote parts of (entertainment) media, I doubt that Colbert will keep up with this bit of metacommentary. For starters, having the cursed amulet drone on and force Colbert to do a commercial would get pretty old—even saying "the cursed amulet tells me to thank my sponsors" would be a bit much every show. Also, there is a certain expectation that a talk show host make jokes about the current events of the day. I'm sure Colbert is news-knowledgeable enough to pull more esoteric events from the news to talk about, but that's not really what people want (is it?). Similarly, his future guests will certainly have projects to push, and he will not pretend (?) to not know them - the conversations will flow smoothly, and the clips will come from real movies. So, while it's interesting that Colbert has pointed his funny finger at the tropes of late night talk shows, it won't be able to last. I'm sure the show will be hilarious, and it will continue to poke fun at itself (and media generally), but it seems to me that Colbert sensibly used what is likely to be his largest viewing audience to make the metacommentary above.
I did mention that there was another theme of the night. Starting with the National Anthem, moving to his display of memorabilia (taken from The Colbert Report) that includes his mother's pennant from the Million Man March, Jeb Bush's comments on healing a fractured Washington (DC), and finally the closing musical number, the grand theme of the show was "bringing people together." While I can't be certain of the reasons, it certainly is a nice sentiment. Given the band's name of "Stay Human," and the new, non-divisive personality of Colbert, I suspect this theme will continue throughout the show's run (albeit more subtly in the future).
What wasn't so nice was the length of the final number. Now, having watched The Colbert Report, I know that he's probably a bit more music-savvy than I am, but I didn't know who half the "special guests" were. I recognized the singer from Alabama Shakes and Derek Trucks, but only because I'd seen Alabama Shakes on his old show, and Derek Trucks in concert (twice!). I have to wonder how many people were in my boat, wondering who the heck some of these people were. Or maybe I was the only one and should feel bad for being musically illiterate? Luckily, an article did help, but the only reason I was able to use it during the final number was the fact that it just kept going on and on. Yes, it fit the theme of trying to bring people together, but after a while it became tiring. Maybe if there had been more musicians I know or care about, I would have felt differently about it.
Other than that one issue with the final tune being juuuust a bit too long, the show was good. Would I stay up late to watch it again? Nope, because I wake up early these days and it's not worth it. I am curious about how the Elon Musk interview will go, but not curious enough to watch it live. Oh well. I suppose I can watch it online, at colbertlateshow.com (Do note that the colbertlateshow.gov address he mentioned right before a commercial break does not, unfortunately, exist—although I wouldn't have put it past Colbert and Obama administration to actually have it redirect to the government's passport renewal page.). Well, I could... if the website didn't stop me from watching videos because I have an ad blocker installed.
Yes, the CBS website is a jerk. I actually first tried to watch things on a tablet, so I got the mobile version of the site (It's worth noting that I have never before actually gone to a talk show's website because it said there was bonus clips and such there, but I did want to see some of the stuff edited / cut out of the Bush interview. For some reason, there were a few cuts that seemed more obvious than usual, both in his and Clooney's interviews—I mean, you can often tell that something was cut out in talk show interviews, but this time seemed more apparent, and I don't know why.). The mobile version of the site has a link for a video about Colbert being the new voice of the Waze app. I assumed it would be a good video to watch, so I tapped it, and was taken to the Google Play Store and directed to download the CBS app. Which is pretty terrible, since they really could just, y'know, let me watch the video on the website. So rather than download a stupid app for one video, I figured I'd watch it on my PC.
First of all, the Waze app video is stuck way at the bottom of the list, and I didn't even notice it at first. Secondly, when I went to watch the Jeb Bush clip instead, it stopped Colbert in midsentence and blacked out the video with this message: "This video is unavailable because we were unable to load a message from our sponsors. If you are using ad blocking software please disable it and reload the page." Refreshing the page without disabling the blocker, or just clicking a new video, doesn't even allow the video to start like it did before. So pretty much I immediately loathed the CBS website because they force either their app or ads on you, and they don't even do it in a clever way with a cursed amulet joke. Now, I did disable Adblock Plus for the CBS site, and didn't see any ads while the videos played (either in the video or around the screen) so that's a plus (they still came on afterwards). There are lots of other videos on the site, and maybe I'll watch them, but given that I don't like the site and rarely watch stuff like that anyways, I probably won't. Alas.
Bonus Food Review: Hummus
At Smith's (my local grocery store of choice, owned by Kroger) the hummus choices are Athenos, Sabra, and the Kroger "fancy" brand Private Selections. Because plain hummus is... well... plain hummus, I usually go for the roasted red pepper varieties of the various brands. Athenos is just not flavorful enough (I think they don't put enough red pepper stuff in there, or something?). Sabra is reasonably good, and they actually have lots of red pepper stuff in the middle. But, shockingly, the Kroger brand of hummus is really freaking delicious! I honestly have no idea how that happened, but their Roasted Red Pepper Hummus is by far the best I've tasted. A few tubs (jars? containers?) haven't been quite as good as their top notch stuff, but even so they always at least equal or better Sabra in the roasted red pepper hummus department.
Of course, only Sabra has the little hummus snack packs. I saw one a few months ago, and tried it. It was pretty good, and nice if you want a hummus snack on the go. Of course, it was pretzels and plain hummus, which tastes good, but it's fairly boring. Because, well... plain hummus again. Apparently they do have other, better flavors available in their snack packs, so that would probably actually be very good. But I don't know where I would get them, so... once again, alas.
In one of the student eating / study areas at my college, they have CBS on during the day. In between classes, I was watching The Price is Right and happened to see that Stephen Colbert's first night was last night. I figured I ought to watch it because: 1. it's TV history (or something), and 2. we watched him a lot during lunch at work, and he's a pretty funny guy. So I stayed up late to watch the premiere, and decided to give it a review, mostly because of the metatextual content I saw. That metacommentary on talk shows and bringing people together were the two big themes of the night, which is a pretty interesting thing for a talk show, but certainly in line with the sort of humor he and Jon Stewart had at Comedy Central. Unfortunately, this review won't be as funny, and since it was written in my head last night, and split between two sessions this morning, it may not even be good at all. So have fun, if you ever read it.
I'm pretty sure the show cold opened with Colbert and random people singing the Star Spangled Banner. (I always feel the urge to stand up when I hear the National Anthem on TV, even though I'm not at the event. I never do, because... well, y'know, standing requires effort. But the urge is there.) I'm only pretty sure about this because I was reading for class and it sort of happened suddenly with no notice, so hopefully I didn't miss much. Regardless, it started off the show with the "bringing people [in the US] together" theme, and brought a bit of the patriotism of his old show with it (even though that was the only part that did so, and he was eventually left, as he said, with only the "narcissism" of his "narcissistic conservative Republican" character). He seemed genuinely happy / awestruck to be filming the opening of the show when he came out, which was nice to see.
The opening monologue was very funny, but remarkably topical. For someone making TV history (his words, but true) he made a lot of jokes that can really only be understood in this particular zeitgeist. This is something that concerns me about all media / culture in general: how much of the totality of a work will be lost to the future, because they don't fully understand the references? For example, as good as Pride & Prejudice is, apparently it becomes SUPER hilarious if you know certain things about the time period (unfortunately I haven't picked up an annotated copy to determine the truth of that claim yet). I suppose there's only a certain amount of humor that can actually be timeless, and talk show hosts are expected to make light of current events, but it struck me as interesting (and disappointing for future people).
There was also a little bit with Jimmy Fallon in there, which was nice. It was pretty brief, so I couldn't tell how sincere Fallon was in his well wishing of Colbert, but he did appear, so I guess it was sincere (hey a rhyme!). It's nice that the two hosts have a friendly rivalry thing going on, but I wonder how long it will last.
After some commercials (there were quite a few commercial breaks—one of which included ads for YouTube and then a Netflix original show right after one another, neither of which I'd seen advertised on network TV before, so that was interesting) we get to the first piece of metacommentary. Colbert noted that just like the rest of the media, he was going to talk about the Republican candidates for president Donald Trump. It is true that when one network or media outlet covers something for the mainstream populace, all the rest of the big media players sprint to follow suit, trying to ensure that their ratings don't slip and that they're relevant, regardless of the actual importance of the subject being covered (although the interest in Trump is arguably actually important). Despite noting that he had to cover Trump because everyone else is, he proceeded to cover Trump anyways. Yes, it was funny, and rather than just straight jokes he did add the context of knowingly joking that Trump and his clips are bad but people just can't stop watching, but it was still a whole bit dedicated to Trump. Whether because of or in spite of the fact that the rest of the media world is doing so is irrelevant; it seemed to undercut the meta-message that media covering things because media is covering things is kind of silly.
A similar thing happened with the Sabra hummus bit. Colbert apparently made a deal with a cursed amulet to get the gig as Late Show host, in exchange for selling commercial goods. Now, the fact that shows are ad-supported is not news, but Colbert's bit about it being, essentially, a deal with the devil explicitly pointed out that perhaps this fact isn't such a good thing for content creators or viewers (And really, who wants ads?). But again, despite this metacommentary, he ended up hawking Sabra hummus and their snack packs. Yes, it was funny, yes it points out the unholy alliance of advertisers and content creators, but he advertised anyways.
The next bit of commentary happened during George Clooney's appearance. One thing Colbert and Clooney addressed was the fact that celebrities (particularly talk show hosts and their guests) are supposed to act like they know each other and get along famously (ha!) despite being pushed together by circumstance, and perhaps having nothing at all in common. Colbert gave Clooney a wedding gift of a Tiffany & Co. paperweight engraved with the phrase "I don't know you." He told Clooney to regift it to the next celebrity that Clooney has to pretend to be friendly with, despite being only a passing acquaintance (I don't know why, but it really appeals to me to think of this little paperweight actually getting passed around the celebrity community, from one not-friend to another).
Clooney and Colbert also addressed the fact that most talk show guests have some sort of project to push when they appear, and here the metacommentary was not undermined: Clooney actually had nothing to push. Instead, they did a funny bit with fake clips from Decision Strike, a movie about the Secretary-General of the UN, played by Clooney, being (basically) James Bond. Perhaps because I was reading so much into the rest of the show, I thought that this could be taken as a commentary on just how not James Bond-esque the job is. I suppose it could also be part of the "bringing people together" theme - rather than having Clooney play a single state's suave secret agent, he was the leader of the (theoretically) premiere international organization dedicated to a peaceful and united human race.
While the first show has these little spots pointing out the absurdity or deficiencies in what are rote parts of (entertainment) media, I doubt that Colbert will keep up with this bit of metacommentary. For starters, having the cursed amulet drone on and force Colbert to do a commercial would get pretty old—even saying "the cursed amulet tells me to thank my sponsors" would be a bit much every show. Also, there is a certain expectation that a talk show host make jokes about the current events of the day. I'm sure Colbert is news-knowledgeable enough to pull more esoteric events from the news to talk about, but that's not really what people want (is it?). Similarly, his future guests will certainly have projects to push, and he will not pretend (?) to not know them - the conversations will flow smoothly, and the clips will come from real movies. So, while it's interesting that Colbert has pointed his funny finger at the tropes of late night talk shows, it won't be able to last. I'm sure the show will be hilarious, and it will continue to poke fun at itself (and media generally), but it seems to me that Colbert sensibly used what is likely to be his largest viewing audience to make the metacommentary above.
I did mention that there was another theme of the night. Starting with the National Anthem, moving to his display of memorabilia (taken from The Colbert Report) that includes his mother's pennant from the Million Man March, Jeb Bush's comments on healing a fractured Washington (DC), and finally the closing musical number, the grand theme of the show was "bringing people together." While I can't be certain of the reasons, it certainly is a nice sentiment. Given the band's name of "Stay Human," and the new, non-divisive personality of Colbert, I suspect this theme will continue throughout the show's run (albeit more subtly in the future).
What wasn't so nice was the length of the final number. Now, having watched The Colbert Report, I know that he's probably a bit more music-savvy than I am, but I didn't know who half the "special guests" were. I recognized the singer from Alabama Shakes and Derek Trucks, but only because I'd seen Alabama Shakes on his old show, and Derek Trucks in concert (twice!). I have to wonder how many people were in my boat, wondering who the heck some of these people were. Or maybe I was the only one and should feel bad for being musically illiterate? Luckily, an article did help, but the only reason I was able to use it during the final number was the fact that it just kept going on and on. Yes, it fit the theme of trying to bring people together, but after a while it became tiring. Maybe if there had been more musicians I know or care about, I would have felt differently about it.
Other than that one issue with the final tune being juuuust a bit too long, the show was good. Would I stay up late to watch it again? Nope, because I wake up early these days and it's not worth it. I am curious about how the Elon Musk interview will go, but not curious enough to watch it live. Oh well. I suppose I can watch it online, at colbertlateshow.com (Do note that the colbertlateshow.gov address he mentioned right before a commercial break does not, unfortunately, exist—although I wouldn't have put it past Colbert and Obama administration to actually have it redirect to the government's passport renewal page.). Well, I could... if the website didn't stop me from watching videos because I have an ad blocker installed.
Yes, the CBS website is a jerk. I actually first tried to watch things on a tablet, so I got the mobile version of the site (It's worth noting that I have never before actually gone to a talk show's website because it said there was bonus clips and such there, but I did want to see some of the stuff edited / cut out of the Bush interview. For some reason, there were a few cuts that seemed more obvious than usual, both in his and Clooney's interviews—I mean, you can often tell that something was cut out in talk show interviews, but this time seemed more apparent, and I don't know why.). The mobile version of the site has a link for a video about Colbert being the new voice of the Waze app. I assumed it would be a good video to watch, so I tapped it, and was taken to the Google Play Store and directed to download the CBS app. Which is pretty terrible, since they really could just, y'know, let me watch the video on the website. So rather than download a stupid app for one video, I figured I'd watch it on my PC.
First of all, the Waze app video is stuck way at the bottom of the list, and I didn't even notice it at first. Secondly, when I went to watch the Jeb Bush clip instead, it stopped Colbert in midsentence and blacked out the video with this message: "This video is unavailable because we were unable to load a message from our sponsors. If you are using ad blocking software please disable it and reload the page." Refreshing the page without disabling the blocker, or just clicking a new video, doesn't even allow the video to start like it did before. So pretty much I immediately loathed the CBS website because they force either their app or ads on you, and they don't even do it in a clever way with a cursed amulet joke. Now, I did disable Adblock Plus for the CBS site, and didn't see any ads while the videos played (either in the video or around the screen) so that's a plus (they still came on afterwards). There are lots of other videos on the site, and maybe I'll watch them, but given that I don't like the site and rarely watch stuff like that anyways, I probably won't. Alas.
Bonus Food Review: Hummus
At Smith's (my local grocery store of choice, owned by Kroger) the hummus choices are Athenos, Sabra, and the Kroger "fancy" brand Private Selections. Because plain hummus is... well... plain hummus, I usually go for the roasted red pepper varieties of the various brands. Athenos is just not flavorful enough (I think they don't put enough red pepper stuff in there, or something?). Sabra is reasonably good, and they actually have lots of red pepper stuff in the middle. But, shockingly, the Kroger brand of hummus is really freaking delicious! I honestly have no idea how that happened, but their Roasted Red Pepper Hummus is by far the best I've tasted. A few tubs (jars? containers?) haven't been quite as good as their top notch stuff, but even so they always at least equal or better Sabra in the roasted red pepper hummus department.
Of course, only Sabra has the little hummus snack packs. I saw one a few months ago, and tried it. It was pretty good, and nice if you want a hummus snack on the go. Of course, it was pretzels and plain hummus, which tastes good, but it's fairly boring. Because, well... plain hummus again. Apparently they do have other, better flavors available in their snack packs, so that would probably actually be very good. But I don't know where I would get them, so... once again, alas.
