Much to my surprise last night, FOX has a new late night talk show. And it actually wasn't too bad.
It started off making fun of past failed Fox late night talk shows, then did a "How to do man-on the street" segment, which turned out too be quite funny. Can't go wrong with the Pina Colada song though.
It's a nice pairing with Mad TV (though I rarely stick around for the full hour of Mad). But if SNL sucks or is a rerun, I might tune in. Kind of reminded me of Late Late Show Kilborn era though not as conceited.

I didn't like it. To me it stuck out like a sore thumb that Feresten had always been a behind the scenes comedian because he didn't seem to have very much chemistry with anyone. And he seemed extremely nervous. To make matters worse, I didn't think the skits were all that funny. They seemed to be attempting a Conan minimalist approach but it didn't work for me. It didn't have the charm.

Conan was also a behind-the-scenes comedian (writer, actually), and for his first shows calling him "extremely nervous" would be an understatement. As for chemistry, well he lucked out big time with Andy Richter, it would have been pretty dire if he had no one but Max to interact with before they got established & he could afford to make a running joke about their astonishing lack of chemistry together. I'm not saying this Fersten guy is going to be the next Conan, but at least he's got an obvious role model to draw inspiration from.

That's accurate, Conan was pretty bad (by his own account) and it's been pretty well documented the struggles of Late Night when Conan first started.

I don't hold it against this show that it was bad, that's pretty much expected from a new talk show. What bothered me was that none of the bits were very original or creative. I would assume that somebody wouldn't get a talk show in the first place if they didn't have some new ideas that seperated themselves from the current crop.

I thought it was actually pretty funny for a new show. Pilots always suck, talk shows or not. I think the guy has potential. But only time...and guests...will tell. At least it's something remotely entertaining to watch on Saturday night.

Any thoughts on this weekend's show. I enjoyed it. Not great, but I certainly enjoyed it more than most of the other late nights.

I did like the part where he made the audience think they were going to get foamballs underneath their seats and it turns out there weren't any.

Spike: Gotcha! I knew you would fall for that.

He's funny and not really annoying. One nitpick I have is his name. Did his parents really name him that or did he get this as a nickname and stuck with it? I checked on imdb.com, but there isn't really anything explaining that.

I liked the first show, but found myself laughing a lot more at the second episode. Especially some of the "search for co-hosts". He just seems willing to try anything. Wish it was longer than 30 minutes.

Just found his MySpace Page. It was kind of hard to find...but thought some of you might be interested.

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fusea...1d-e6babd13fc4b

That video of his on myspace was funny. I laughed out loud a couple of times. I also liked what he put on his age. Thanks for putting that up, I'm going to send this to all my friends.

I missed it this past week!
What'd I miss?

I read an article saying he got the name when he was an intern or writer on either Conan or Letterman. I can't even remember the story, but it was a nickname that stuck. I think the story might be on the official site.

I was "eh" about this episode until they did the nerdy guy segment. That was rad.

I love Spike! Anyone who has Tom Lennon from Reno 911! and asks him to say things he can say on Comedy Central but not on Fox is ok with me. Not to mention the stoned gila monster montage.

He reminds me of Michael McDonald's character Rusty who does the really excited interviews with celebrities--maybe it's the reddish hair.

If baseball EVER ends, I'll tune in again.

ETA: He was great last night. Glad I checked. Loved the "DiscrimiNav" ad. Jerry Seinfeld was on a roll, too.

Yes, a pretty good show last night. The interviews on the beach segment was funny, as was the Nanny 911 things. But I'm partial because I love Nanny Deb.

DiscrimiNav was petty good too. "Working class" Heh.

"Jay Leno has his chin, David Letterman has his gap tooth, Jimmy Kimmel has polyps.."

For the life of me, I can't understand why I find him so amusing, but I do. That segment he did interviewing people from his neighborhood was in such bad taste--and even Spike admitted that they strayed away from the premise so much that they were now just making fun of perfectly nice people...and then he continued to interview those people! You know you should quit when random neighbors start throwing Tide at your camera crew. I liked his line "Sir! Have you tried fabric softener? All right all right I'm going!"

Yeah that was quite funny, not sure why Tide man had so much anger...maybe he thought he was caught on Cheaters or something?

Don't know if anyone is still watching, but I am...late night Saturday would be very boring without this show. Anyway, Fox just announced they renewed it.

I like the show, too, but I have to admit, I wouldn't have watched Talkshow if it didn't immediately follow Mad TV and I wasn't too much of a lazy ass to change the channel.

Spike proved Saturday that he is definately worthy of an hour. And both his comparrison video of "Benjamin Button" and "Forest Gump" and commercial parody of The Snuggie were both brilliant and funny.

I happened to turn to this last night just in time for Seth MacFarlane singing "Valentine's in Hollywood". That Angelina Jolie lyric was seriously wrong and had me choking all at once.

Besides, I'm a sucker for anything that derides Tom Cruise.

"Talkshow" has been canceled by Fox in favor of giving Wanda Sykes her own show. Fox is out of its f**king mind.

Check out Spike's My Space blog for the full article.