Top 5 TV: Trevor Noah’s ‘Daily Show,’ Miley’s ‘SNL’ Song of the Summer
We’d waited months, debated Twitter fouls and argued over the too-much-too-soon of it all — finally, last week, we got a taste of what a Trevor Noah-led Daily Show would actually be like. The South African comedian had the tall task of replacing Jon Stewart, who over a decade ago turned the politically savvy late-night show into a nightly ritual for many Americans (and more recently, a reliable source for “so-and-so destroys such-and-such” articles on the Internet). The first few nights mostly inspired a lot “he seems unflappable” comments — and then a segment near the end of the week proved what a biracial 31-year-old stand-up from Johannesburg could actually bring to the table.
Noah’s best moment earns him a spot on this week’s list — alongside a divisive HBO series, an ABC sophomore sitcom that found its groove, and a Comedy Central cult favorite completing a season for the ages. And as long as we’re talking about treasured American cultural institutions, Saturday Night Live began its 41st season by jumping directly into the madness of the Presidential race, which was another reassurance that the recent departures of Stewart and David Letterman would not mean the end of bullshit-detection. Fear not.
5. Trevor Noah finds his Daily footing; Seth Meyers gets political on Late Night (Comedy Central/NBC)
On his first three nights behind the TDS desk, Noah’s jokes were solid and his delivery confident; he didn’t stand out from the late-night pack so much as keep a sturdy boat afloat. Then on Thursday night, the host brought in his first killer bit: using Donald Trump’s direct quotes to compare the Republican frontrunner to dictators ranging from Idi Amin to Muammar Gaddafi. These weren’t the kind of stock jokes that anyone could’ve landed. Noah had his own slant, inspired by his spending most of his life on a continent overrun with bad-hair megalomaniacs. By Friday morning, all the usual political and entertainment sites were posting their “here’s the Daily Show Trump takedown you have to see” pieces — which these days is the true measure of late-night success.
Perhaps energized by the prospect of another young competitor, NBC’s still semi-green Late Night host Seth Meyers had his own viral moment last week, when he picked apart the congressional Planned Parenthood hearings via his segment “A Closer Look.” Meyers is no stranger to political commentary: He did plenty of it on Saturday Night Live‘s “Weekend Update,” albeit mostly in the form of one-liners. With this routine, however, Meyers delivered a succession of sharp jabs, letting each sarcastic interjection and each snippet of a condescending male congressman build off of each other. It was a righteous pummeling, and if the Daily Show, Nightly Show, Late Show, Late Night, and Last Week Tonight keep trying to top each other…this is quickly going to become a golden age for bomb-throwing comedy.