TVSquad

If you're anything like me (first of all, you have my deepest sympathy), you haven't been able to sit still since The Daily Show and The Colbert Report went off the air for the holidays. It also may be because my body has absorbed more sugary fat from the holidays than one of Tyler Durden's homemade soaps.

Both shows returned to the airwaves Monday with new episodes. Both also had cable news celebrity cameos so big, no lightning fast news ticker announcing an accidental nuclear missile launch could draw your attention away from them.

The Daily Show returned with another appearance by CNN's gray-haired uber-anchor Anderson Cooper and an interesting interview with new Meet the Press moderator David Gregory. The Colbert Report picked up former Hannity and Colmes pushover Alan Colmes and wound things up with an interview with CNN reporter John King.

Here's the breakdown: Cooper made a rather long cameo on Stewart's show. After an ultra-depressing story Israelis attacking the Gaza Strip, the show counterbalanced the impending threat of a Middle East nuclear meltdown with...puppies!

Cooper served as moderator for a faux-debate on the possible candidates for the next White House dog that presented a perfect parody of the meaninglessness of televised presidential debates. It also provided five solid minutes of puppies and dogs so cute and sweet, your TV could give you diabetes if you sat too close to it.

This is at least Cooper's third cameo on Stewart's show. Between that and his cameos on Colbert's block, his presence doesn't seem as funny or genuine as they did in his first few episodes. The segment was still funny, but Cooper has such a hip swagger and huge chunk of the spotlight that it almost feels like he's part of the show. Now when he's on the show, he's not the straight-laced newsman who is supposed to look serious and stoic as the correspondents dance around him with microphones and ask him if he thinks he has a cooler name than Wolf Blitzer.

Then Gregory sat across the world's most high-glossed news desk to chew over the media's role and plans for the Barack Obama administration. It was more jokey and silly than Stewart's surprisingly hard-hitting interviews with media types. It did have a fair amount of insight and observation on reactions to the Rob Blagojevich scandal and the media's coverage of Obama so far. The most astute came from Gregory when Stewart asked him how he would handle his "pro-Obama bias," and Gregory turned the question around by asking Stewart, "What in the hell are you going to do?" Oh snap Stewart! You just got served, inverted pyramid style.


Then on The Colbert Report, Stephen sat down with King, who will host his own news show on CNN on Sunday mornings. He didn't announce its official name, but if I may be so bold: "Hail to the King." It just has a nice Evil Dead II/Duke Nukem ring to it that you only see these days on Fox News and the Speed Channel.


Finally, we've saved the best for last. Colbert announced at the top of the show that he would be changing formats to a new debate style show called Colbert and Colmes with... if I really have to tell you at this point, you either haven't been paying attention at all or are dead. If you're dead, please seek help immediately.

Anyway, Colmes recently bailed out of the Fox News ship from his self titled show Hannity and Colmes, where Fox News has replaced Colmes with Sean Hannity. He calmly strode out into the studio and plopped down next to Colbert behind his famous "C" shaped desk in a chair that stood a full foot shorter than Colbert's.

The rest of the show just got funnier from there. Colmes has, hands down, the funniest cameo on The Colbert Report since a bloated Henry Kissinger announced at the start of Colbert's "Countdown to Guitarmaggedon," "Stephen, crank it up." The creative and funny ways he turned Colmes into his liberal bitch must have made Hannity slap his head a couple of times and utter, "Why didn't I think of that?"