I said earlier I was tired of Jon Stewart withdrawal, as he's been off the air for several weeks now because of the writer's strike. He's back on, but I may have another withdrawal state coming up. Without his writers, the show is a little painful to watch. Some have suggested that he may deliberately be aiming low in sympathy with the Writers' Guild, to which he belongs, but it's just not working very well. Stewart's strengths are his comic news bits in the first half of the show, and those are not suffering quite as badly as I thought they might without his writing staff, but with only a token appearance by "correspondent" John Oliver, it's just Jon on stage, and I guess he really needs someone to play straight man to every so often. Plus, he's not really a very good interviewer, and the last couple of nights, his interviews have taken up more of the show than usual. The first night, his 15 minutes with a Cornell professor talking about the strike and labor relations in general was painful; the guest didn't seem to understand that he was on a comedy show, and Jon was clearly obsessing about the strike. His later interviews have just emphasized how bad he is at interviewing people with serious topics to discuss. He awkwardly stepped all over David Frum, a political writer who probably would have been genuinely interesting if Stewart have felt more at ease, or had more notes from his writers. From what I've seen of Stephen Colbert, he's handling the strain better. Whatever the problem, if the strike isn't cleared up soon, I may soon be going through Jon Stewart withdrawal again, even if he remains on the air!
Friday, January 11, 2008
Poor Jon Stewart!
I said earlier I was tired of Jon Stewart withdrawal, as he's been off the air for several weeks now because of the writer's strike. He's back on, but I may have another withdrawal state coming up. Without his writers, the show is a little painful to watch. Some have suggested that he may deliberately be aiming low in sympathy with the Writers' Guild, to which he belongs, but it's just not working very well. Stewart's strengths are his comic news bits in the first half of the show, and those are not suffering quite as badly as I thought they might without his writing staff, but with only a token appearance by "correspondent" John Oliver, it's just Jon on stage, and I guess he really needs someone to play straight man to every so often. Plus, he's not really a very good interviewer, and the last couple of nights, his interviews have taken up more of the show than usual. The first night, his 15 minutes with a Cornell professor talking about the strike and labor relations in general was painful; the guest didn't seem to understand that he was on a comedy show, and Jon was clearly obsessing about the strike. His later interviews have just emphasized how bad he is at interviewing people with serious topics to discuss. He awkwardly stepped all over David Frum, a political writer who probably would have been genuinely interesting if Stewart have felt more at ease, or had more notes from his writers. From what I've seen of Stephen Colbert, he's handling the strain better. Whatever the problem, if the strike isn't cleared up soon, I may soon be going through Jon Stewart withdrawal again, even if he remains on the air!
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I read (skimmed) an article on Slate about Stewart and Colbert that made a similar point -- Colbert's having a slightly easier time because his bloviating character can get away with whatever brash statements he wants to make.
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