Sunday, August 13, 2017

Post-Mortem: @midnight

Seacrest OUT
It's been about a week now, but @midnight ended a 600 episode run recently, and  I thought I'd look back at what it did, what it was, and the hole it leaves in the comedy landscape.


Firs tand foremost, it was funny. I mean, yeah, it occupied a range, depending on who the guests were, what the games were, how it was edited, etc., but on average, it was a very funny show. And after four seasons, while they may have felt like they were running out of ideas, it idn't show up on the screen.

It was also, on average, very Hollywood Racist, that mix of white males as default and well-meaning tokenism that's all too common. That said, though, when I think of all the new faces and comics I learned about from thiis show, the ones that stand out especially the women of color, because a lot of my consumption is white male default too.

It put Emo Phillips back on my teevee again. Repeatedly. So he could absolutely crush it every single time he was on.

The format let it move effortlessly between the absurd and the pointed, true right up through the last wepisode, where the final @midnight in five words game got "one black at a time" and "one woman at a time" as answers.

It was the most successful "panel format" show of this age, a loose format that allowed a rotating grouip of clever, funny people to fuck around for a while. With it gone, the only example I can think of is Guy Branum's "Talk Show The Game Show" on TruTV, and I can't find any news about when or if there'll be more of that.

With it gone, the Comedy Central late night juggxrnaught is now limping along with just the anemic Daily Show. It'll soon be joined by Jordan Klepper, which I have a very hard time getting excited about in any way. Seems like a lapse another channel could step up and exploit.

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