When the folks at The Daily Show announced that they were going to do a live broadcast from Washington on Inauguration Day, I'm sure a lot of people envisioned Jon Stewart behind a desk in some D.C.-area college auditorium, with up-to-the-minute field reports and maybe even a brief appearance from President Obama ... or at least someone near and dear to him.What we got was Stewart sitting behind his New York desk, and ... pretty much a normal episode of TDS. In fact, nothing about it indicated to me that they needed to make it live. The only parts that came from the nation's capital, in fact, were a shot of reporter Wyatt Cenac at the Youth Inaugural Ball and a satellite interview with Bishop Gene Robinson, who did the invocation at the Lincoln Memorial concert on Monday.
The other two reports, from Jason Jones and Samantha Bee, were the standard green-screen reports that the show is known for. Bee's report on the end of frat boy humor in Washington, was merely a way to make silly jokes with the words "balls" and "bush" in them.
None of the episode looks like it benefited from the extra five-and-a-half hours of prep time (the show generally tapes around 5:30 PM). Since most of the festivities were over by early afternoon, I can't even imagine that the crew needed the extra time to cull and riff on the news footage, though I'm sure they appreciated the breathing room.
Don't get me wrong: It was pretty funny. I especially loved the lines Jon made about seeing an injured Dick Cheney being pushed around in a wheelchair (video of the segment is below). Yelled Jon: "You might as well get rolled out to the Star Wars Imperial March with a white cat on your lap, for God's sake!"
Maybe the rest of the crew will be filing some fun field reports for tonight's show, but overall, I thouht they could have done a little more.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
1-21-2009 @ 2:10PM
0megapart!cle said...
Yea, I have felt the same way about most of the Daily Show "special events". They usually disappoint (if you were expecting something significantly better/different than a normal Daily Show episode).
But yea, last night was great, especially Jon and Jason's reactions to their comparison of Obama and Bush's speeches. It is not so much that we don't believe that Obama means what he says, but that we think the meaning behind the words is so different than when Bush says it.
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1-21-2009 @ 2:53PM
Gobsmacked said...
I'm puzzled as to your article. Why live? "None of the episode looks like it benefited from the extra five-and-a-half hours of prep time?" As a self described expert on television, you seem to be totally unaware that each episode of TDS reflects the previous day's events. In fact, they put the inaugural day's show together without the normal 24 hour production time. Perhaps it was to be timely and newsworthy and professional.
Perhaps you "could have done a little more" before writing this entry.
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1-21-2009 @ 2:57PM
Anita said...
I have to admit that I agree. I expected something similar to their coverage of the election. While I thought the first 10 minutes were hilarious with the breakdown of Obama's speech, the comparison between Obama and Bush as well as the Cheney line, everything else seemed as business as usual. While the exuberance was there, the funny not so much. I guess they couldn't be as obnoxious at the inaugural balls as they were at the conventions, but maybe that would've provided a bit more entertainment -
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1-21-2009 @ 3:16PM
viewdrix said...
It wasn't an event by any means, but based on articles about the normal schedule of an episode, I'm not surprised they needed the extra time. They basically start culling together stuff at 9 AM, and though the official taping is always supposed to be at 5:30, they regularly go late. When I went to Colbert, normally a 6:30 taping, it didn't start until 8:00 PM and we didn't get out until near 9 - and that was a normal, everyday episode. Go check the videos for September 23rd.
Ideally, having to timeshift the entire prep process by about 4 hours later than usual in order to incorporate the inauguration made perfect sense.
I'm glad they didn't go for a big event episode, from Washington or otherwise. Having up-to-the-minute updates as you suggest would probably have meant it would have had to devolve into improvisational banter a la the disappointing Election Night 08 special.
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1-21-2009 @ 3:18PM
Joel Keller said...
You might have a point. I've read most of the same articles you did about the production process, but I figured they could alter it to include at least the swearing-in and speech, since they were over by 1 pm. But that may have been cutting it too close for a 5:30 taping. Still, there should have been at least one or two more field reports from DC, no? Maybe John Oliver annoying people in the crowd or something. Like I said, maybe that'll be on tonight's show.
1-21-2009 @ 6:22PM
Chris Shifty said...
It was probably production and marketing reasons. They probably needed time to dig up the Bush speeches and have their rehearsal.
They wanted Wyatt live at the ball, (who will probably do a report tomorrow).
They just had the "Live" so they could watch, digest and figure out what they could do, they hade some insurance that they wouldn't be pressed for time.
They probably saw that Obama's speech did sound like the same stuff from Bush and the extra hours allowed them to put that together. Maybe they had live stuff filmed and they decided to go with the Obama/Bush and Obama "cool" stuff for time.
Their guest may have been busy during the day as well.
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1-21-2009 @ 7:14PM
VP said...
Okay where the heck was John Oliver last night? The Wyatt Cenac segment was a total drag for me. Oliver in the crowd during the inaguration or just outside would have been great. Overall an excellent episode though.
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1-21-2009 @ 8:23PM
StillBash said...
Yes is the correct answer but I understand this post. I thought the same thing but on the other hand compare this show with the CNN coverage of the even.
I mean what was THAT? It was like Diana's funeral. They basically provided zero insight no extra info and the "Yes I thought I'd live to see the day" isn't a joke, it was a necessity on tuesday... I mean the best thing would've been if they would not have spoken at all over at CNN. Just shut up already and let me soak that in. Don't tell me that it's noon and Obama is now the president. Who gives a rat's ass?
And while I thought that it is sometimes easer to just ignore things like this. So TDS and TCR weren't that different from usual days - but how bad would it have been if these two shows on this special day would have been just "meh", let's say like every episode of SNL? Both TDS and TCR are "meh" at times and if you ask me why bother asking this question? They felt they needed the time and to be honest I don't really think they made that much fuzz about being live. If you ask me they mentioned it for us to understand why Jon wasn't swearing and not being bleeped for doing so, like he mentioned at the end of the episode.
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