TV Review: The Daily Show - Week Ending May 7

I was pretty underwhelmed by the last week of The Daily Show. It is not like the show was without opportunities: There were plenty of subjects ripe for ridicule and scorn.

Take, for example, magician David Blaine’s stupid stunt where he sat in water for a week and then escaped from chains. There was a segment on the show with correspondent Jason Jones where he pretended he was going to stay with Blaine throughout the whole week, heckling and mocking him. He said he was following in the footsteps of his grandfather who did the same thing for escape artist Harry Houdini. But it was not all that funny. The funniest part was probably the continuing routine of giving each correspondent a special title for each segment. Jones, in this bit, was given the title "senior street magicologist." Wikipedia has documented Blaine's other acts, which seem to be less about endurance or entertainment and more about macho performance art. I found the Wikipedia summary — especially the ugly reaction he received in London — more amusing than Jones' performance.

There were several references made on The Daily Show to Stephen Colbert’s daring, clever performance at the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner where he openly mocked President Bush, who was sitting nearby. Stewart said he was flipping through C-Span when he came across Colbert doing his shtick, hailing the chief in his own special way. Colbert used to be on The Daily Show and now has his own show where he does a dead-on satire of blowhard Bill O’Reilly of Fox News. Stewart described the annual black-tie event as an occasion when the White House and the correspondents who cover it "consummate their loveless marriage." Colbert’s performance has been discussed elsewhere in Blogcritics, from those who liked it to those who did not. Google has the video on its site. My favorite dig by Colbert was this suggestion he made to the White House reporters to:

Write that novel you got kicking around in your head — you know, the one about the intrepid Washington reporter with the courage to stand up to the administration. You know — fiction.

Sadly there was little on The Daily Show that was as funny, clever, or as daring as Colbert’s performance.

Article Author: Scott Butki

Scott Butki was a newspaper reporter for more than 10 years before making a career change into education... then into special education.

He reads at least 50 books a year and has about the same number of author interviews each year and, …

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