Pages Menu
TwitterRssFacebook
Categories Menu

Posted by on Jul 12, 2013 in Featured, Pop Culture, Ted McLoof, Television | 0 comments

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart with John Oliver

ds_18113_03

“Let’s all just acknowledge that this is weird,” John Oliver told the audience on his first day behind the Daily Show desk. “It looks weird, it feels weird, it even sounds weird—it sounds weird to me, and this is my actual accent.” Oliver took over hosting duties on The Daily Show four weeks ago, while Jon Stewart is overseas directing a film about Egypt’s version of Jon Stewart, Bassem Youssef. Expectations for Oliver’s substituting duties weren’t high, but not due to any kind of doubt w/r/t Oliver’s abilities. It’s simply because Jon Stewart has taken on a sort-of holy status with the media in general and young, smart people specifically, and maybe we all know in the back of our minds that he can’t live forever, that his time hosting TDS is going to end, sooner than you think. Stewart is, after all, fifty years old, and he’s got two kids, and any and all reports about how TDS operates indicate that it’s a young man’s (or woman’s) game, grueling and exhaustive. TDS has had only two hosts, Stewart and Craig Kilborn before him, and when Kilborn hosted the show it was basically Talk Soup Light. Under Stewart’s reign, it’s become the sharpest, smartest…actually, that’s not even true. See, what I was going to do there was to qualify TDS somehow as the “best” of all the something else’s just like it on TV, but the truth is that there isn’t anything else like it, not even The Colbert Report or Real Time with Bill Maher, because those shows both take active stances (albeit Colbert satirically) on their subjects. TDS, however, sits back and watches, observes, comments, analyzes, skewers—and it’s all so successful, or at least you’d think so, because of Stewart.

Enter poor John Oliver, he of the thick caterpillarian eyebrows, the lanky frame, the dental work that can only be described as “English.” How was the guy supposed to make any sort of headway at all, under those circumstances? After all, isn’t it only logical to assume that anyone who takes over Stewart’s hosting duties at this point, even if it’s sold to us as temporary, is actually auditioning as his replacement?

And yet, a weird thing has happened. John Oliver, you might say, got lucky. Yes, a lot of bullshit has been happening to the world this summer, but our loss is his gain. The summer of 2013 is insane with major news stories: the NSA scandal, the repeal of DOMA, the repeal of the Voting Rights Act, the George Zimmerman trial, the search for Edward Snowden, the Schumer/Graham Immigration Reform bill—even little nothing stories like Paula Dean’s racial slurs. And that was just June. It would be easy to take credit away from Oliver’s accomplishment as host (as I did in his first week) by simply saying he’s got his work cut out for him with all these underhand tosses. But there’s something else, I think.

Call me a heretic, but I think Jon Stewart’s presence has become (only a teensy bit) smug over the past few years. It started with his interview with Mad Money’s Jim Cramer four years ago. TDS has had its share of epic debates, Stewart going head-to-head with people he’s feuded with, but the Cramer interview came off ugly, Stewart looking like a bully, seemingly pinning the entire financial meltdown on this one guy. The following year, he held the Rally to Restore Sanity on the White House mall, a rally that didn’t really seem to do much, say much, accomplish much, or point to much besides the fact that Stewart was holding it. In fact, basically since Obama took office, the show has taken a slightly more solemn tone than it had in the previous ten years, and it’s becoming harder and harder for Stewart to hold on to his position as a voice on the sidelines. It’s like when hip-hop artists made famous for their rags-to-riches stories get truly rich: they lose the core of their identity. Stewart knows how important he is (he’d have to be an idiot not to), and you can almost see the anxiety paired with that level of importance paling his face each night.

Oliver, on the other hand, is young(ish) and fresh and new, and his delivery reflects that. When Stewart makes “I’m an ass” jokes they sound disingenuous; when Oliver makes them they make sense, since he’s an untested newbie with zero credibility whatsoever. It’s also odd that the writing team still seems to be writing for Stewart—the jokes have his comedic rhythm to them, still, and it’s easy to imagine how he’d tell them if you listen closely. Yet Oliver puts his own spin on them (his accent also helps immensely, w/r/t the whole seeming-like-an-unprofessional-street-kid thing, since it’s near-Cockney in its timbre, making him sound like the Artful Dodger, a poor but resourceful orphan living by his wits). And he’s humble, too: his first statement about his hosting gig was, “Don’t worry—it’ll still be everything you love about The Daily Show, just minus the thing you love the most about it.”

Point is, I guess, that no one should be too wary of what will happen when Stewart does leave for good (though hopefully that won’t happen for years—I swear I do love the guy), because not only must the show go on but evidently it can, and brilliantly.

Here are Oliver’s five best jokes from his first month:

5. (On the NSA scandal): “The government has been collecting an unprecedented amount of information on that small select group of us who either talk on a cell phone or use the internet. I’ve gotta say, the Amish are probably feeling pretty smug right now—or they would be, if they had any idea this story was happening.”

4. (On Pat Robertson’s comment that the Boy Scouts allowing gay members shames an organization just because some kids want to do sex with each other): “‘Do sex?’ That phrase is just the latest reason that I feel incredibly sorry for Mrs. Pat Robertson: ‘Do you want to do sex tonight, honey?’ ‘No, sweetheart, but it would be nice if you would tear off my ears and fingertips.’”

3. (On George Zimmerman’s lawyer opening the trial with a joke): “The two things you don’t want to hear at your trial are ‘We find the defendant guilty,’ and ‘Knock knock.’”

2. (On Germany’s new laws requiring prison sentences as a consequence for homosexual acts): “Right, because nothing reduces instances of homosexuality like a lengthy jail term. Good job.”

1. (On the NSA’s new facility, which can hold five zeta bytes of data): “Zeta bytes? You’ve gotta be careful with those—I’m pretty sure that’s how Michael Douglas got throat cancer.”

Zing!

Ted McLoof

About Ted McLoof

Ted McLoof is a writer at Rookerville and teaches fiction at the University of Arizona. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in the Minnesota Review, Bellevue Literary Review, Gertrude, Monkeybicycle, Sonora Review, Hobart, DIAGRAM, The Associative Press, and elsewhere.He's recently been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and a Best of the Net Award. He is very cool and very handsome and he'd like to buy you a drink.

Comments

Leave a Reply

%d bloggers like this: