"Indecision 2008": Of course, all the news was about the New Hampshire primary, but that didn't mean Jon Stewart couldn't sneak in an excuse to show a clip from American Gladiators. The man secretly adores that show and he totally knows it. The segment was more about the news media's coverage than the actual primary. The basic summary of the popular pundits' reactions to the primary is: Obama, Obama, Obama. Hillary?! Whaaa? 
Also, I was a bit perplexed by CNN's needlessly flashy... things. I don't even know what to call them. How am I supposed to categorize a floating 3-D pie chart? Jon's "Surely, they are witches" face was very similar to mine when I saw the magic, moving buttons. I'm starting to feel like any CNN money that doesn't go to Anderson Cooper's hair maintenance or keeping Larry King alive is spent on exuberantly shiny toys that belong in a Skymall catalogue.
John Oliver showed off the Daily Show's unusually spinny Mystery Machine van. It was pretty adorable, but he needs to brush up on his fake-nausea. Take a note from these guys, Oliver...
The night's guest was John Zogby of Zogby Polls. For an interview all about polling, it was actually kind of entertaining. Zogby was informative without sending me into a deep, deep sleep.
Jon/Stephen: None?! Setting up for the toss must take more work than I expected, because I thought that they would do this every day that the writers aren't around, just to fill up time. Oh, well. Moment of Zen: CNN's pundits and analysts said that a Hillary victory would be a huge surpri -- Holy crap! It's that guy! It's that guy from that old California recall report that Stephen Colbert did way back in the day when he was still on TDS. Colbert fed him pizza while porn music played in the background. I'd post a video, but it doesn't look like TheDailyShow.com has gotten around to that one yet.
Sorry, recognizing people from old episodes makes me giddy. Another thing that makes me a little too giddy is Stephen Colbert dancing to Justin Timberlake's "Sexyback", which he definitely did at the top of his show, Ellen-style.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
1-10-2008 @ 1:14PM
Zachary said...
The audio on the news clips seemed strange. Did anyone else notice that? It sounded like they were taped in a recording studio. Is the strike affecting how they tape the show?
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1-10-2008 @ 1:58PM
Nathaniel said...
The Ellen dance was the funniest part of Colbert! Good stuff.
I'm still wondering how much of this is "written"...
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1-10-2008 @ 2:37PM
ac said...
I'm watching the rerun of Colbert just to see the dance lol!
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1-10-2008 @ 3:20PM
Jon B said...
Here's the link you're looking for:
http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=114019&title=popping-a-big-tent
Classic Colbert.
Reply
1-10-2008 @ 5:03PM
Discosis said...
I noticed the odd audio on the news clips too.
Usually Jon will let a clip play and then talk about it when the camera cuts back to him, but this time it seemed to be pre (or post) recorded, because you couldn't hear the audience either.
There's been a slightly "off" feel to both TDS and TCR all week long, I'm guessing there's a lot of editing happening after the recording to put the shows into a coherent 22 minutes. I guess it'll diminish with time as they get used to working with the improv.
Colbert's interview with Huckabee was interesting. I really expected him to get out of his "running mate" gag, but it seems he's learned the lesson that noone else has - the best way to handle Colbert is to out-ridiculous him :)
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1-10-2008 @ 6:56PM
jds65 said...
I didn't like the Zogby interview. He seemed to ignore the questions and mostly just have no idea.
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1-10-2008 @ 10:13PM
Scott H said...
The audio was also odd during the satellite interviews, even more than you'd expect with delays. Like Colbert's talk with Huckabee. It seemed almost edited & chopped up, with questions & answers ending abruptly. I don't understand how not having writers could cause them to have to pre-pre-tape and edit the interviews.
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1-11-2008 @ 8:20AM
Bill said...
I wonder if the Colbert satellite interviews aren't entirely improvised, with Stephen just riffing for 10 minutes, and they chop it down to the best 3 minutes or whatever.