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Thoughts of Letterman's exit?


karelm

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This is the last week of Letterman. There were so many funny episodes (mostly when they went off script).

Talk!


Come on people, this is funny!

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I used to watch late night talk shows almost every day in high school, but for whatever reason I stopped. I guess I just don't care for the publicity BS of it anymore (the post-monologue stuff). I still watch the occasional Conan sketch on YouTube though and wish I never stopped, but I can't get back into doing it regularly.

Love Tom Waits, so I'm glad this popped up in my news feed the other day:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKBFSU-LUw0

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I've been watching Letterman since the early 80's. He has many great moments, far too many to list. This one, however is my favourite. I would be a happy human if he busted this one out of mothballs for the finale... Not likely, though. Fast forward to around 4:10 for the best moment.

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Always been a big fan, and was over myself when I scored a ticket in the 'ticket lottery' last year. Never thought I would be able to see the man himself in a live setting. Too bad that the guests weren't the best (the silly goofball Donald Trump being the main header), but that's of secondary concern.

Very sad to see him go.

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When I was in college, Letterman was my guy. I couldn't stand Leno. Although I haven't watched the show in years, his retiring makes me feel a bit old!

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  • 2 weeks later...

Lifelong Letterman fan. I was optimistic for Colbert because I've liked what I've seen of him out of character in the past. It now seems he's doing the show in basically his Colbert Report character. Everything about this show looks embarrassingly bad. I hope I am wrong but it just looks atrocious. There is nobody left who is just a good broadcaster , interviewer and genuinely funny on network late night. As a child of the nineties, I occasionslly enjoy Fallon's nostalgia-drenched bits but his interviews are not good and he's just not that funny. His skits can be good in an SNL type way but he does daytime TV at night...clipped and pre packaged for Facebook videos. I hope someone comes along to pick up the torch. Conan is the closest but nobody touches the Carson/Letterman type show. I've seen both Fallon and Letterman live more than once. Fallon is like you're in the studio audience for a scripted sitcom. Stuff filmed out of order, bits filmed for future shows, reshoots, multiple takes, etc. Being at a Letterman taping was a live event. It happened in real time almost exactly as it would happen. I saw Letterman four times and never once was anything reshot. My brother was at the final show. He reshot just a single intro to a clip because he said the date wrong. I hate that he is gone.

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He reshot just a single intro to a clip because he said the date wrong. I hate that he is gone.

Now the moment in the finale makes more sense, when he was introducing the Taco Bell clip and he said the date and some of the audience laughed and clapped.

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Everything you say about Fallon et all is so spot on. It's like these new generation of late night hosts are just there to try to create viral videos every night.

That's what I loved about Craig Ferguson's show. He just showed up every night with no pre-planning and improv'd an amazing hour of comedy and that was that. Seeing the start of his last run of shows live was utterfly fantastic. Miss him the way many seem to be missing Letterman now, who I watched religiously in the 90s but hadn't really seen since.

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He reshot just a single intro to a clip because he said the date wrong. I hate that he is gone.

Now the moment in the finale makes more sense, when he was introducing the Taco Bell clip and he said the date and some of the audience laughed and clapped.

Exactly. And that's another thing I loved about him. He treated it as if he was doing a show for the studio audience that happened to be broadcast on TV as well. I saw a Thursday taping once. On Thursday, he did two shows and he didnt tape on Friday. That's why on Friday broadcasts he would often make jokes about Thursday's audience being bad or whatever...it was the same audience. He also came out before almost every show and joked and took questions from the audience. The last taping I saw several years ago, he kept on talking and laughing with the audience and didn't leave until the band started playing the opening theme. He was a classic performer for sure!

And I agree that Fallon is aiming for a different generation and that's fine. It's just almost not late night tv in the way I think of it. It's a daytime variety show at night. He's obviously doing great in the ratings so people like what he does. I just hope that the actual art of late night television as a live event versus all pre-recorded, scripted clips isn't dead.

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Lifelong Letterman fan. I was optimistic for Colbert because I've liked what I've seen of him out of character in the past. It now seems he's doing the show in basically his Colbert Report character. Everything about this show looks embarrassingly bad. I hope I am wrong but it just looks atrocious. There is nobody left who is just a good broadcaster , interviewer and genuinely funny on network late night. As a child of the nineties, I occasionslly enjoy Fallon's nostalgia-drenched bits but his interviews are not good and he's just not that funny. His skits can be good in an SNL type way but he does daytime TV at night...clipped and pre packaged for Facebook videos. I hope someone comes along to pick up the torch. Conan is the closest but nobody touches the Carson/Letterman type show. I've seen both Fallon and Letterman live more than once. Fallon is like you're in the studio audience for a scripted sitcom. Stuff filmed out of order, bits filmed for future shows, reshoots, multiple takes, etc. Being at a Letterman taping was a live event. It happened in real time almost exactly as it would happen. I saw Letterman four times and never once was anything reshot. My brother was at the final show. He reshot just a single intro to a clip because he said the date wrong. I hate that he is gone.

Good points. My sister went to jimmy kimmel where the guest was advertised to be Harrison Ford. She was thrilled to say the least. Kimmel said Ford was pre taped without an audience but applaud when Kimmel introduced him. Talk about inauthentic. To her great disappointment they edited in Ford's appearance as if it were live with the audience. What I loved about Letterman was how cynical and off scripted the show felt. For example if a guest was on that he didn't really care for, like o'riely, or a Leno rant, Dave would have difficulty hiding his disdain but was still entertaining.
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I grew up watching Conan... Late Night with Conan O'Brien was my first foray into late night and to this day I still feel that Conan is the one that should rightfully be deserving to take Dave's place. One of my all time favorite skits from Conan was back when he's still hosting Late Night:

His interviews reminds me a lot of Dave's style too:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vidI-bkWoE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F8V74N64Q20

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I'm sure Dave will not pull a Jay Leno on Conan; I think Dave had a lot of respect for Conan as witnessed by what he said when the Tonight Show rift was ongoing and when he invited Conan as guest after.

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In Leno's defense, he never actually wanted to go. NBC kinda forced that on him because they didnt wanna lose Conan to another network.

But the entire idea of giving Leno a show right before Conan and everything that happened becasue of that is bad judgement. From both NBC and him.

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And I would also like to point out how heartwarming to see almost all the American late night hosts gave tribute to Dave, and the most heartfelt tributes I've seen were from Conan, Kimmel and Jon Stewart:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dsfckzyF2g

While others just gave just as good tributes on their own:

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The other guy is part of the staff. He is 200% logic or so if you look at these videos you'll see a lot of these few minute clips with that guy unscripted and they are hilarious because he pushes all of conan's buttons and all the staff hate him. Check out the performance review one.

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Jordan Schlansky!! Oh men, Jordan and Conan made for some of the funniest comedy duo in television today. Here's some of my favorites that they made over the years:

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1zucbn_jordan-schlansky-house-hunting_fun

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GzT1YI8Ecs

And the time Jordan and Conan visited Lucasfilms:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uISFoWdk8Gw

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Yeah, I lost hours yesterday thanks to whoever it was who uploaded that baseball clip a few days ago. Youtube then recommended others and I watched these for hours. I like the coffee one too. But the one about couples therapy was just so damn funny.

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