Late Night's 100th Episode And I'm Outta Here

On Monday, Late Night with Seth Meyers celebrated its 100th episode. I've watched every minute of every episode and I've tried to post the highlights of the show here. Given that the number of highlights has been maybe one or two clips over the span of 100 hours of television, you can imagine what I think of the show.

The internet is replete with antipathy (or so I've heard). There are "h8ers" and "trolls" and "this person OWNS this other person" and most things seem to "suck" in one way or another. I don't think this iteration of Late Night sucks, I don't even think it's bad. It's just not very funny either.

So I've watched all 100 episodes but I'm stopping here.

The big cautionary tale in this area is when Conan O'Brien took over Late Night. The show was not very funny, Conan got the reputation of not being funny and the show was consistently in danger of being cancelled. And look at him now.

But Conan's failure was a different kind of failure. Conan was trying new and extremely experimental types of comedy and the danger of experiments is that they often blow up in your face. In the early years Conan was striking out but he would go down swinging. If I saw that with Seth Meyers I'd be completely on board. But I don't see that. I don't see anything new, groundbreaking or even very interesting. It's just "safe" and on an even keel all the time. It's middle-of-the-road. It's a type of talk show that takes all the tremendous highs and lows of trying new things - things that may "hit" but may "bomb" - and flattens them all out into comedy that's always slightly amusing.

Seth Meyers' show reminds me a lot of Jack Paar, which means I should love it. But Paar told stories with more emotion which evoked heightened reactions. Paar added weight to the show by inviting politicians on and asking them probing, even challenging, questions (contrast that with the dumbed-down lovefest that Meyers recently had with Nancy Pelosi... or better yet, don't). Most importantly, Jack Paar had Jonathan Winters. And if Seth Meyers ever gets anyone like Jonathan Winters I'll be right there watching again.