Stephen Colbert has a new show!

He's not afraid of anything. Except maybe bears.

I like Corddry (R) though, although his Plame skit was, well, douchey.

Also, AaronK: BitTorrent.

i was wondering who else would notice that.

I was playing WoW so I wasn't playing close attention but there were multiple points where I hollered with laughter. Also, who knew Stone Phillips was so funny????

thanks. i'll keep it in mind. i'm currently scared of bitTorrent.

x-post

I like that he's staying in character but NOT in that Jiminy Glick way, god no. It makes things like the interaction btwn the stage manager and Colbert pretty great, yet the viewer doesn't feel left out of the joke. A weird balance of laughing at and laughing with.

haha, "babies", yes - xpost

Last night's episode of @midnight was really funny. Maybe watch it?

too american for me, sorry. and as i'm watching stuff i work i tend to listen rather than actually watch.

inside amy poeller i enjoyed though. perhaps a bit too visual. but there's one full episode and 10000000 2 minute long clips...

hopefully john oliver will be back soon (but only 20 minutes per week) and larry wilmore will prove decent.

I think Oliver returns in early February. Wilmore starts in less than two weeks.

miss this dude

hope he's having a nice holiday

inside amy poeller

I wish this show existed. Prefer Amy P.

Amy Poehler did have a Comedy Central show that very few watched

(sidenote: no shade koogs but i idg how @midnight is 'too american' when colbert is like an apple pie driving a monster truck around a baseball diamond)

haha tru

um, hard to explain. was more the format than the content.

the setup i didn't like, the quiz show aspect: 3 comedians (identified by their twitter handles rather than their names) making jokes about kid rock. the baying audience (mostly this). the whole trawling the internet for content thing.

@midnight is so horrible even though I often like the comedians on it

It's basically just the show version of browsing the front page of reddit with comedians, but I find it pretty harmless. For the record the comedians are introduced by their actual name, too.

it's entertaining and basically has an infinite amount of content. one episode I saw reunited everyone from The State, which was awesome. one had Jay & Silent Bob on it, which was not. I agree the completely arbitrary quiz show format is kinda dumb

basically watch any episode with Ron Funches

agree with sufjan, they have a lot of good guests, but the format is somewhat irredeemable. typical comedy central setup, honestly

It's basically just the show version of browsing the front page of reddit with comedians,

i have never watched this show but if forced to guess what it was like this would have been my exact answer

For people who don't look at reddit ever, but DO listen to a bunch of these comedians making the rounds on various podcasts, @midnight just seems like an extension of that.

that's otm and the reddit thing is fair too except for the implied negative. it is a fun show. the comedy 'quiz' format is p well established in the UK but maybe less familiar to others. i think you learn not to expect too much outside of some chuckles.

I don't have any problem with it really besides that some episodes can be duds depending on the guests. It's a much better alternative than The Jeselnik Offensive bullshit that I'm sure only existed as an experiment to figure out what makes Tosh.0 popular then do more of that. Which... I guess @midnight also is but in a different way.

It just bothers me that the comedians give canned answers in a stupid fake talkshow environment that's supposed to look spontaneous. I also don't like that nerdist dude's nerd reference dropping persona.

persona is basically Larry the IT Guy

tbf Hardwick has been in the nerd game for sometime now

I think there's a difference between "canned answers" and pulling jokes from your own repertoire and retrofitting them for the topic at hand. I'm not gonna go to the mat for @midnight—sometimes I don't care if I watch it or if I miss it either—but it's the best show CC has developed for that time of night since Colbert started.

yeah "canned answer" is a misnomer, but the design of the show, where prepared jokes are made to seem spontaneous, treats the viewer like he's an idiot.

I don't think the jokes are as prepared as you think they are. These men and women are pretty comically nimble by definition.

maybe you're right. maybe they do second takes of jokes and that makes them seem prepared to me. I also don't doubt that hardwick is authentically nerd joel mchale. but nerd joel mchale's only method for establishing that he is nerd joel mchale seems to be dropping references to bits of nerdy culture. and that's just an annoying way to behave.

Yeah, Hardwick runs an empire called Nerdist, hosts after-shows about Walking Dead, and maybe some other things, but he doesn't really code as "nerd" to me. He's basically the normal guy version of Ryan Seacrest.

Wilmore's Nightly Show ads are getting funnier all the time, though. Getting psyched for that show to start.

I used to find Hardwick incredibly annoying, but I guess a couple seasons of The Talking Dead have softened him up for me. That said I can still see why his persona would be irritating. Just remember we still live in a world where The Big Bang Theory is the most successful sitcom...

yeah...*hangs head down low*

Is there any other way to prove yourself a legit nerd in nerdy culture BESIDES dropping references?

yes, you make something new that nerds like.

I understand it's nagl to police who can be a nerd. I don't even identify as a nerd. But if you try to make money by appealing to a 'nerd audience' you should be making something new that speaks to that audience, rather than just making references to that audience's canon. You can drop some references while having a conversation with some nerds and that is fine because you aren't selling them anything.

Hardwick's personality is causes a wide range of reactions. I generally dig much of what he does, but his style is so distinctive it can be easily mocked.

I really enjoyed his interview with Andrea Romano, someone I believe never gets enough credit for what she was able to achieve:

http://www.nerdist.com/pepisode/nerdist-podcast-andrea-romano

Hardwick is probably pulled by two different sides of nerddom, one being comics/sci-fi and the other one being standup/comedy (the latter has a very devoted, judgmental and intense fanbase as well).

xp yeah, Romano is amazing. I should give that a listen.

Listening now. It's really really good.

Is there any other way to prove yourself a legit nerd in nerdy culture BESIDES dropping references?

Hardwick never seems to know anything about what he's referencing, just that he's learnt references from somewhere and has an idea of when to shout them

^^^ guy comes off like an idiot to me

Who doesn't though

You really don't think he's authentic? I never suspected it was an act.

I guess this kinda explains it all

I knew that I had two choices: I could continue living the way I was living and die pickled and unemployed, or make sweeping changes with the hope of salvaging my life. It occurred to me that I had arrogantly banished all the nerd qualities that defined me as a youth. I distinctly remembered that I once had the ability to focus intensely on many things. Programming computers, winning chess tournaments, playing videogames, collecting action figures, Dungeons & Dragon-ing, ruining the bell curve in Latin class. I needed to reconnect with that past and find a way to harness those nerd powers to turn my life around. They had to be useful for something other than frightening girls away by deconstructing the character of Tron as a Christ figure.

I think I sense this desperation in each reference and that is what puts me off.

Also, I dig @midnight just for the amazing guest roster of comics & improv-types

Every episode with Bret Gelman and/or Ron Funches is worth yr time

that's an interesting article by Hardwick, I didn't know any of that about him. can definitely relate too much to it *cries*

watched the debut of Nightly Show - p good! I approve of the panel/Bill Maher format w/out Bill Maher. Not interested in a nother late night show trotting out people peddling books and bad movies.

Yeah, Nightly Show will keep getting better, but it started really strong imo. Was surprised the Keep it 100 segment seems to be an every night thing rather than an occasional thing.

best-of clips up on the comedy central website

(they are also streaming the whole of the daily show for the next 42 days apparently)

last week i went looking for clips. there were a few, sorted by year. - http://www.cc.com/shows/the-colbert-report

today i went looking for clips and there were 9974 sorted by season. that'll do. - http://www.cc.com/shows/the-colbert-report/video-guide

Colbert suggested the other day that the 2 best prog bands are Yes and Steely Dan

I shouldn't get mad about this but I am