Three Things Wrong With Late Night Comedy
While everybody is following the spectacularly terrible job NBC is doing with their late-night line up (stop canceling Jay on the installment plan and leave Conan where he is!), the time is ripe to look at what's wrong with the actual comedy. Here are three things that are consistently troublesome:
1. Jay Leno Steals Jokes
Yep, it's the ultimate sin in comedy and Jay does it all the time. Amazingly, he does it in plain sight. In his recurring "Headlines" segment, Jay reads headlines or the fine print from real newspapers and magazines. This often involves typos or other slip ups that make things sound unintentionally funny. There's nothing wrong with a little found humor, I guess. But not everything in the "Headlines" segment is an accident. Sometimes a headline is funny because an editor at some local paper wanted to write a funny headline. Sometimes those "stupid criminal" stories Jay likes so much only made the paper in the first place because the editors thought they were funny. When Jay reads them on the air, he's using somebody else's material. Just because they wrote it in a deadpan style doesn't mean they weren't trying to be funny. Jay knows that, but he still goes on the air and acts like he's the first person to notice the humor.
Think the writers and editors of all those local papers are getting TV writing credits or compensation from NBC? Yeah, me neither.
2. Everybody Makes Fun of People For Dying
Let's say you're not famous, but you did something that made some sort of cultural impact. Nobody knows your name, but everybody remembers that thing you invented or the company you followed. I've got some bad news for you. When you die, every late-night talk show host is going to make fun of your death. There's a weird, unwritten rule that it's okay to do this if the joke says that you died or will be buried in a manner reminiscent of the thing you would be best known for. This is, for lack of a better phrase, extremely tacky. The subjects of these jokes did not lead public lives, but they are dragged briefly into the spotlight for a cheap joke (a joke that often implies the mutilation of their dead body.) Basically, if somebody merits a small obit in the paper ("The inventor of the Slinky passed away yesterday..."), then they will be mocked on the talk shows. I guarantee that when they inventor of the Slap Chop dies, you'll hear multiple monologue jokes about how his remains are being diced into small pieces and sprinkled over ice-cream.
What makes it worse is that there is an exception to the rule. You will never hear a joke like this about anybody in the entertainment industry. Making a joke about their deceased friends and colleagues would apparently be in poor taste. And predict that when Jay Leno dies, Letterman will make a heartfelt tribute to his former rival. He will most certainly not say "His family says they will miss him, but they are replacing him with an episode of Dateline."
3. The Community Jokes Are Tired (and Often Untrue)
The Community Joke is a joke that's been said so many times that half the country takes the punchline as conventional wisdom. Bush is stupid. Gore is dull. The Harry Potter actors look like they should be in AARP. Angelina Jolie has a million kids. Pavarotti is fat.
These jokes are bad because they're overdone, but more importantly, they're bad because they get accepted as true. And they're not necessarily true. Bush was poorly spoken and uninterested in nuance, but he wasn't stupid. Gore wasn't folksy and he was too interested in nuance, but he can be funny and engaging. People have been joking about the Harry Potter stars since the second film, but when you see them in the last movie, they three actors will be 19, 20, and 21--which is a reasonable age for an actor passing as a high school senior on screen. (The stars of Ferris Bueller's Day Off were around 19, 23, and 29.) Angelina Jolie has six children. That's more than some people, but it's not unusual by any means. She can certainly afford to take care of them and nobody has ever questioned her abilities as a parent... so why do we mock her for doing something that so many people do? Because it's an easy punchline that we can all use. That's the nature of the community joke.
Okay, I grant you, it's true that Pavarotti was a heavyset guy. God rest his soul.
1. Jay Leno Steals Jokes
Yep, it's the ultimate sin in comedy and Jay does it all the time. Amazingly, he does it in plain sight. In his recurring "Headlines" segment, Jay reads headlines or the fine print from real newspapers and magazines. This often involves typos or other slip ups that make things sound unintentionally funny. There's nothing wrong with a little found humor, I guess. But not everything in the "Headlines" segment is an accident. Sometimes a headline is funny because an editor at some local paper wanted to write a funny headline. Sometimes those "stupid criminal" stories Jay likes so much only made the paper in the first place because the editors thought they were funny. When Jay reads them on the air, he's using somebody else's material. Just because they wrote it in a deadpan style doesn't mean they weren't trying to be funny. Jay knows that, but he still goes on the air and acts like he's the first person to notice the humor.
Think the writers and editors of all those local papers are getting TV writing credits or compensation from NBC? Yeah, me neither.
2. Everybody Makes Fun of People For Dying
Let's say you're not famous, but you did something that made some sort of cultural impact. Nobody knows your name, but everybody remembers that thing you invented or the company you followed. I've got some bad news for you. When you die, every late-night talk show host is going to make fun of your death. There's a weird, unwritten rule that it's okay to do this if the joke says that you died or will be buried in a manner reminiscent of the thing you would be best known for. This is, for lack of a better phrase, extremely tacky. The subjects of these jokes did not lead public lives, but they are dragged briefly into the spotlight for a cheap joke (a joke that often implies the mutilation of their dead body.) Basically, if somebody merits a small obit in the paper ("The inventor of the Slinky passed away yesterday..."), then they will be mocked on the talk shows. I guarantee that when they inventor of the Slap Chop dies, you'll hear multiple monologue jokes about how his remains are being diced into small pieces and sprinkled over ice-cream.
What makes it worse is that there is an exception to the rule. You will never hear a joke like this about anybody in the entertainment industry. Making a joke about their deceased friends and colleagues would apparently be in poor taste. And predict that when Jay Leno dies, Letterman will make a heartfelt tribute to his former rival. He will most certainly not say "His family says they will miss him, but they are replacing him with an episode of Dateline."
3. The Community Jokes Are Tired (and Often Untrue)
The Community Joke is a joke that's been said so many times that half the country takes the punchline as conventional wisdom. Bush is stupid. Gore is dull. The Harry Potter actors look like they should be in AARP. Angelina Jolie has a million kids. Pavarotti is fat.
These jokes are bad because they're overdone, but more importantly, they're bad because they get accepted as true. And they're not necessarily true. Bush was poorly spoken and uninterested in nuance, but he wasn't stupid. Gore wasn't folksy and he was too interested in nuance, but he can be funny and engaging. People have been joking about the Harry Potter stars since the second film, but when you see them in the last movie, they three actors will be 19, 20, and 21--which is a reasonable age for an actor passing as a high school senior on screen. (The stars of Ferris Bueller's Day Off were around 19, 23, and 29.) Angelina Jolie has six children. That's more than some people, but it's not unusual by any means. She can certainly afford to take care of them and nobody has ever questioned her abilities as a parent... so why do we mock her for doing something that so many people do? Because it's an easy punchline that we can all use. That's the nature of the community joke.
Okay, I grant you, it's true that Pavarotti was a heavyset guy. God rest his soul.
posted by The Editors at
1:09 PM
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