The seventy-second TV show: #701 The Colbert Report
When I covered the Daily Show a while ago, it was to come back to a show I'd seen before, trying to get a bit of a sense of its history. I had not really watched The Colbert Report though, so this was to really get me a new insight.
It takes a lot of work and daring to hang a daily news comedy show off a fake news pundit's imaginary show while skewering those views while staying believable. I believe he's currently doing great in his late night talk show (one I haven't seen yet) where he plays himself, but here the character helps. Where Jon Stewart is the annoyed and weary observer, Colbert is actively in the middle of the news, directing you to observe these views more closely instead of getting annoyed at a distance. It feels unique and centering the conversation work in a way that later follow ups didn't quite manage. By sending up these personalities, their rhetorical tricks become more obvious. Colbert stays funny all the way through, not becomes obnoxious even where that would have been easy - by going too far or staying too real.