LJonEarth

I actually don't hate the Maddie storyline, someone with talent and opportunity being held back (for the right reasons) by her parents. I just think it's being told at the wrong point in this show. And they had to get here by making Maddie insufferable and dumping even more on her father and sister. Layla Grant's storyline is a perfect mirroring of Aubrey's place on this show. A bunch of boring nothing. I love her voice, but the writers really don't know what to do with her. I still feel like they have bones of interesting storylines, with the four or five groupings of characters. If there's time before whenever this series ends, I wish they'd stop introducing new characters semi-main characters and quit meandering with the main characters' plot lines. Luke helping Will is a great storyline. Don't care about his son. The Exes are path is interesting. Again, don't care about son or baby momma or meddling Alicia Witt. I won't go on. This show has always felt so unfocused. People here in Nashville even seem to have completely given up on it after last season.

I'm an idiot and only now realizing that this was the season finale. I'm of two minds. I appreciate when art reflect life without nice neat endings. But, with the history of this show, this all still feels a bit like the storytelling on this show is more about courting awards voters and playing games than telling a story and telling it well. I'm frustrated.

I'm not sure about how I feel about Anthony Mackie. He's got that Will Smith fake energy, but without the media training. After that interview I'm clueless about his new non-Marvel movie. But I've yet to come away from one of Trevor's interviews enlightened.

Drew loves the show. He's been talking about it for a year on his radio show and Derrick has been on multiple times. His reasoning for being on this episode is: I like to have fun too. Do what you want with drinking, we're all adults. If you think you have a problem and want help, there are people to help you. If you don't want help, you can't be forced to change. This was one of the better episodes. I haven't enjoyed this season as much as the last.

The way that Jonathan Franzen talked about his prison pen pal (and "what had happened to him," not what he did) was disturbing; and I'm somewhat upset that Stephen didn't call him on it.

Yes. I'm aware he's South African. Being African and being based out of the States aren't mutually exclusive. My father is African, but has been in the States for 40 years. Thank you for those who clued me in on his pre-Daily Show stuff. I'm not a huge fan of jokes based on completely fake premises. So, the joke, or at least the way it was read, had me scratching my head.

Trevor does sound like he's reading, but so do most news and new talk hosts, from the nightly news people, to the MSNBC folks, to Bill Maher. That's why it doesn't bother me. The only thing that bothers me is "scripted" moments that are supposed to sound off-the-cuff sounding like they're teleprompter lines because of poor reading. He'll improve. I don't know what I was expecting, but was Trevor joking about being a debate virgin. I don't know his background beyond his TDS appearances. Where was he based prior to taking this job. If he was living in the US and he'd never seen a debate, that adds to my worry about him really not getting American politics.

I just finished the Maddow show and I think it was the best so far. Trevor finally had a good "interview" with Rachel. It may be because he was just having a conversation with her rather than the butt-kissing and the project promotion stuff. And maybe Rachel doing this every night helped too.

Trevor's channeling Chris Farley. Tone it down on the fanboying. I know Jon did it, but it seemed like it came from a place of actually know the guest. I think that he would do better to find something important and substantive and discuss that with the celebrity guests. Kevin Hart: discuss his push to get people running/moving. Seth: Stick to the Sony hack or maybe marijuana legalization or is Alzheimer charity work. There's depth to some of these people (or at least they can fake depth). Stop with the "I heard it was fun to make this movie" stuff. That style of talk show fell out of favor in the 90s. Anyway, a week in and Trevor and co. has their first hits with the last night's episode. I really liked both of the pieces.

I don't understand the pumpkin hate. I hate mangoes. Mangoes are in a lot of things. I don't eat those things. End of story. It's for two months out of the year. People need fun things to discuss. I suppose this fits the bill on both sides. I'm assuming that Trevor doesn't have a build up of rage about American gun violence or how our government works. I wonder if that could be why he was so soft on Christie. Perhaps it could be a good thing to be able to step back. But there are times like this when I need someone's who's fed up and mad as hell and express it.

I don't quite understand the app, but from the way she keep pumping the girl power thing up, it seems like the power (or empowerment) is from the rules of the app being that women make the first move. So, because the men go in know the women move first and the women go in knowing they have to move first, it makes it seem less like you're stepping outside of social norms and more like you're just following the rules of the app. I'm excited to see how he fares against/with Rachel. Let's see how much of what he does is scripted.

A second strong episode! I'll give him the benefit of the doubt with a couple of his jokes during that interview. I think I'm just waiting for the Trevor from the old Twitter posts and interview comments to make an appearance. This debut seems too good to be true. Now I want a Ben Carson mixtape. I haven't heard anyone go after how dull Carson is.

I'm surprised that he didn't go for a more substantive interview with Kevin since he actually had something substantive to discuss. I had completely forgotten about the 5K challenge thing. I would have been interested to hear about how it's grown since Kevin started. Then they could've mentioned the tour. Either way, both of those topics got glossed over. They're in the language safe harbor, right? If their advertisers are fine with a few "shits," then I'm sure we'll hear more of it. A bet Larry doesn't have that much latitude with his sponsors.

I'm cautiously optimistic, but that was enjoyable, probably the most enjoyable of the late night debuts since Craig on the Late Late Show. I understand why he was there and I'm a fan, but the Kevin Hart butt kissing was a bit much. However, I think I prefer that to a super dull or intense candidate interview. Ease into that stuff.

It seems like they're going for full on satire more "Wet Hot American Summer" or "But, I'm a Cheerleader" (what I remember of it) than "Popular," "Election" or even "Scream." I would have liked it if they'd done a bit more to set up why the other girls would have gone along with all of this. It would make more sense if they were all Chanels or all legacy pledges desperate to be a part of that sorority. I thought it was a fun show. I just know I need to turn my brain off when watching, which is fine with all of the other shows there are to digest. Like most Ryan Murphy projects, I see this show running out of steam sooner rather than later. But it should be fun along the away. But no more 2 hour episodes. That was too much for me for this type of show.

I kind of assumed he would be a hermit too because of how he and his guests have always spoken about him. But in all of the post-Late Show interviews that I've seen, he...kind of won't stop talking. It's great. He seems really free and fun again. I can't wait for this new mini-series.

The thing about the music guest is that you always know exactly when to tune out. Same with the other segments of a standard talk show. The thing I like about the Carol Burnett shows is how mixed up the format was. If you were going to wait until after the top of the hour to tune in for the interviews, you would have missed out. And if you aren't a fan of his monologue or desk work, tough, you had to sit through it because it came after some of the interviews. I actually ended up sitting through an enjoyable Kevin Spacey interview that I didn't want to see (love his work, but he gives me the willies) because it was all jumbled with Carol's stuff. And I was kind of waiting for her to come back out again for some reason. If they're not going to have unpredictable interviews, I like the idea of mixing things up with the show format.

When I saw Dave's show, the way they warmed you up and prepped us made it almost impossible not to do that. Plus if there was a lot of peer pressure to applaud. We were told to laugh as much as possible and not clap much. But some people took that to mean react as much as possible, which became clap at everything. When we walked out, we turned to each other and commented on fun the show was but how unnatural the whole thing felt.

You're right. I actually took a year away from TCR because it was so off. When I came back, it was a great show. I'll have another week with this show and then step away to check out the Daily Show. As far as Stephen breaking things up with his own Stupid Pet Tricks, I wonder how he is with the audience? I know Jon Batiste is good with regular people. But I don't remember much if any audience interaction on his old show.

I really enjoyed tonight's episode. I have no complaints. I honestly started out really not looking forward to turning this on (I couldn't make past the Biden interview last night. I couldn't go to sleep sad.), but this was the strongest episode so far as a typical fun late night talk show. If they can reproduce this, I'm in. I've seen the articles saying Colbert is going to be less Letterman and more Charlie Rose. And honestly, that's not what I need before bed.

It appears the prescripted interview gags are here to stay. I know the old guys had their wacky bits that would have gone viral had Youtube been around, but this seems like more of what Fallon does. Stephen needs to chill during the interviews and just talk and listen. For an improv guy you'd think he'd be better at that. I suppose he's used to doing them in character and for a shorter amount of time, but talking over the guests isn't going to cut it. I enjoyed all of the first part of the show tonight. But I was a longtime TCR fan. I don't know how a general Late Show audience will feel about it. Speaking of Fallon. He was trending all night on social media. No sign of Colbert like last night.

This is what I always think about stars like Clooney or Tom Cruise. I watched talk shows for engaging guests, never just to see the biggest movie stars (personality be damned). I'd rather have someone less famous who's a fun guest. This being the premier month, I don't know that they needed to push hard to get the "big guests." The show just being new and Stephen being who he is could draw ratings alone.

Nicole had a run in with a thief! http://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/detroit/2015/09/09/nicole-curtis-hgtv-star-says-she-escaped-carjacking/71962462/ Although this is how she tells it:

I mean this is the best way possible, but that didn't feel like a first episode to me. It felt like an everyday middle of the week, some things work, somethings don't episode. I suppose his other show was so tight that everything always seemed to work. This felt to me like when I watch Letterman reruns. No nervousness or jitters, but it's not a whole 45 minutes that I would rewatch. The strangest part for me was to see the seemingly scripted interview segment with Clooney. With most shows it seems like the host is in on the preprepared stuff or the guest is, but not both of them. It seemed too scripted. But I suppose they're trying to mix it up since a majority of talk show viewers are tired of standard interviews, hence Jimmy Fallon's popularity.

Robert Kirkman doesn't care about black people. This was a better episode. Having seen enough false alarm public health and safety issues and a few real ones, it's difficult to see people behaving like they don't know how to prepare for an emergency. One would think the local news or at least cable news would have people behaving with way more caution and purpose by this point.