trow125

The Breyer intro was so Report-y that it could have been called "Better Know a Justice." And I actually watched the entire Emily Blunt interview with pleasure. The part where Stephen started singing "On the Street Where You Live" did feel spontaneous to me (unlike the puke take, which was obviously planned). More of that, please!

A few changes... (*Denotes changes and/or additions to previous schedule (n) Denotes new broadcast) Monday, Sept. 14 Actress Emily Blunt; Justice Stephen Breyer; musical performance by The Dead Weather (n) *Tuesday, Sept. 15 Actor Jake Gyllenhaal; Apple CEO Tim Cook; musical performance by Run The Jewels with TV On The Radio (n) *Wednesday, Sept. 16 Actor Kevin Spacey; TV legend Carol Burnett; musical performance by Willie Nelson & John Mellencamp and interview about Farm Aid (n) *Thursday, Sept. 17 Actress Naomi Watts; United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon; musical performance by Chris Stapleton (n) Friday, Sept. 18 Actress Lupita Nyong’o; Senator Bernie Sanders; interview with and performance by “An American in Paris’” Christopher Wheeldon, Robert Fairchild and Leanne Cope (n) *Monday, Sept. 21 NBA MVP Steph Curry; Senator Ted Cruz; musical performance by Don Henley (n) Tuesday, Sept. 22 Donald Trump; U.S. Secretary of Energy Dr. Ernest Moniz; musical performance by Raury (n) Wednesday, Sept. 23 Actor Hugh Jackman and founder of the Global Poverty Project Hugh Evans; Senator Elizabeth Warren; interview with and musical performance by Pearl Jam (n) *Thursday, Sept. 24 Author Andrew Sullivan; Journalist and Activist Maria Shriver; Comedian Jim Gaffigan; Archbishop Thomas Wenski; musical performance by the YMCA Jerusalem Youth Chorus (n) Friday, Sept. 25 Nobel Prize Laureate Malala Yousafzai; Actress Kerry Washington; musical performance by The Arcs (n)

"Dog On Fire" was written by the great Bob Mould, one of my all-time favorites. His version of the theme (the guitar-heavier rendition) was used during the Kilborn years. TMBG rerecorded it when Jon took over. I've also wondered about the theme, and my guess is that they'll do a new recording of it, since they seem to want to keep some continuity with the old TDS (the ads are certainly seeking to reassure people that "it's still TDS").

He talked about his suits on one of the podcasts. He is definitely loyal to Brooks Brothers.

I've been puzzling over the segment with Paul Simon last night -- like, why did they do it as the pretend-cover band instead of simply announcing the real Paul Simon was going to be the musical guest. I mean, it was an amusing gag, but why wouldn't Simon want his fans to know he was actually going to appear on the show? It just occurred to me that Paul is a very close friend of Lorne Michaels -- he's been on SNL a million times -- and Lorne produces Jimmy Fallon's show. So maybe Simon didn't want to annoy his friend by going on the "competition"'s new show.

The coffee sketch with Laura Linney was the funniest bit of the week, IMO. It was kind of like one of those SNL parody commercials, but better (how could it not be, with Laura Linney!). I'm in the minority regarding Amy Schumer because I felt the interview came across as overly scripted -- it didn't feel spontaneous to me at all. The bit about living in Jake Gyllenhaal's apartment that led into the queued-up clip of her eating the cake. And she's told the Katie Couric phone story several times before. I wish she'd just come on with no pre-interview, no set-up bits, but that's not how late night talk shows roll these days. From what I've read, last night's Fallon segment with Donald Trump was an embarrassment, so I hope Colbert's has some edge.

Musk appeared twice on TCR: July 28, 2010 and July 24, 2014. Jon Stewart never used notes either.

Ugh. Donald Trump & Ted Cruz are both going to be guests on LSSC. Yay -- Elizabeth Warren & Malala. Mo 9/21: Steph Curry, Sen. Ted Cruz Tu 9/22: Donald Trump, Dr. Ernest Moniz, Raury We 9/23: Hugh Jackman, Hugh Evans (founder of the Global Poverty Project), Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Pearl Jam Th 9/24: Andrew Sullivan, Maria Shriver, Jim Gaffigan, Archbishop Thomas Wenski Fr 9/25: Malala Yousafzai, Kerry Washington, the Arcs

FYI: The Oreo segment was NOT product placement (i.e. paid for/approved by Nabisco). It was just a comedy bit riffing on Trump's mention of the brand. The Sabra segment WAS product placement.

I noticed that when Clooney first came out, he looked oddly orange, almost Boehner-like, but then after a couple minutes the lighting was adjusted and he looked more "normal." Re: Jon Stewart's role as a producer, I suggest listening to Larry Wilmore's recent interview on "Fresh Air" for a hint of the sort of helpful advice he offers. I think TNS is 100 times better now than it was when it started and I think Jon played a large part in that. My favorite segment from the debut was the Oreo/Trump bit -- I have no idea if Oreo was product-placement but since Trump referenced them so many times, it made perfect sense. It was the type of bit Colbert could have done on the "Report." (I'll bet I slip and refer to it as the "Report" more than once!) Least favorite was the Clooney interview. The segue from Darfur to Amal was just painful; I hope it was just opening-night jitters because I think Stephen is a better interviewer than that. The fake movie clips were not funny. I did enjoy the salute to Biff Henderson; as an old-school Letterman fan I feel like that was a little bit of red meat for longtime "Late Show" viewers. During the entire run of the Report, I would estimate that I saw 99.9% of all the episodes produced (the only ones I missed were a handful when my DVR broke in the era before you could watch the show online). I predict that with LS I'll record it, watch the comedy segments, and FF through movie-star guests (Scarlett Johansson's the lead guest tonight -- yawn). I am looking forward to Stephen King, Joe Biden, Ban Ki-Moon and the other non-actors he has booked.

It was a mediocre episode, but on the plus side, I loved the fact that it was on at 11! Ordinarily, I never get to watch it when it's actually airing.

Ha, I had a similar situation with one of the really early tours which featured Jay London (I don't think they did "official" LCS tours at that point, but a bunch of the comedians played one of my local comedy clubs). I really, really disliked his comedy. I didn't enjoy him live either, but it was still worth it to see the comics I DID enjoy, though. I met and got my photo taken with Dave Mordal after the show. Good times. Because the TV sets are so short, it's often hard to get a sense of what the comics are like live, when they have 15-20 minutes or more to stretch out.

If by "annoying" you mean totally awesome, then I agree. I don't think I could ever get sick of Funches, but I guess I'll find out the week of the 21st! Here's who's been announced for the next 2 weeks: Tu 9/8: Paul F. Tompkins, Andrea Savage, James Urbaniak We 9/9: Hari Kondabolu, Kyle Dunnigan, Matt Braunger Th 9/10: Steve Rannazzisi, Paul Scheer, Jon Lajoie Mo 9/14: Seth Green, Greg Proops, Craig Ferguson Tu 9/15: Nikki Glaser, Nick Swardson, Kyle Kinane We 9/16: Heather Anne Campbell Th 9/17: Patton Oswalt, Blaine Capatch

They used to do a bunch of rounds in a comedy club where the audience would vote. Then when they were down to the top 5, there would be a call-in vote, a la "Dancing with the Stars," where each comic had an 800 number. Wanda Sykes has said that she wanted to change the format so the judges pick the winner:

I was kind of shocked to see that it won its time slot. Not that there was a lot of competition. One advantage of this format over last year's is that no comic winds up having to perform way more than any other comic. The "I know I'm funnier than" sometimes resulted in certain comics having to perform week after week and burn through a lot of material, while others got to save it for the finale. But I do miss the bits like the comics doing roasts, working as tour guides, etc.

If you're DVR'ing the premiere, make sure you set it to run long; I saw this note on the CBS Press page:

New correspondents

This is just a fantastic article (with great photos, too!) about Stephen from the NY Times.

I agree that Jimmy Kimmel is a smart guy with a savvy take on pop culture -- I watched his show regularly for several years, though I haven't caught it as often since it moved to 11:30 -- but he does do that "pre-interview talking point" thing that I really, really hope Stephen avoids. "So have you been on vacation recently?" [star tells well-rehearsed anecdote about his vacation] Or he'd ask somebody if they'd ever done commercials, and when they said yes, he'd "just happen" to have some old embarrassing clip ready to roll. I always felt that Stephen's improv background was one of his great strengths as an interviewer on TCR and I hope he can make the show feel spontaneous and loose.

I highly recommend this interview with Norm MacDonald. And now I'm super curious who this LCS contestant was:

Another new promo. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f4XJrBBRrQc

I'm going to put the upcoming guest lists in the episode thread for now, rather than do individual-week threads. So here are the guests for week #2. Monday, Sept. 14 Actress Emily Blunt; Justice Stephen Breyer; musical performance by The Dead Weather (n) Tuesday, Sept. 15 Actor Jake Gyllenhaal; musical performance by Run The Jewels with TV On The Radio (n) Wednesday, Sept. 16 Actor Kevin Spacey; TV legend Carol Burnett with comedians Abbi Jacobson and Ilana Glazer; musical performance by and interview with Willie Nelson (n) Thursday, Sept. 17 Actress Naomi Watts; United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon (n) Friday, Sept. 18 Actress Lupita Nyong’o; Senator Bernie Sanders; interview with and performance by “An American in Paris’” Christopher Wheeldon, Robert Fairchild and Leanne Cope (n)

I wonder if the "puppy" Oliver was talking about is his dog Hoagie? Judging from the reviews, it seems like a lot of the material Oliver did in Australia was on the older side (I think the stories about why he didn't become a professional athlete were featured on his DVD), so maybe the dog stuff was as well.

If you don't follow Stephen on Twitter, do yourself a favor and look at his Twitter feed to read his priceless comments from the past 2-3 days about his Time Magazine cover photo.