21 January, 2015

An Uneven But Auspicious 'Nightly' Opener : Monkey See : NPR

An Uneven But Auspicious 'Nightly' Opener : Monkey See : NPR:

Yes, shows like this are always trying to generate conversation with
sometimes outrageous prompts, but it seemed particularly unfortunate for
the very first question to essentially equate any recognition of nuance
— the understanding that the question is flawed — with a failure of
realness.



Stuff like that is important, because this show is designed to be really smart as
well as really funny, and smart comedy doesn't really need traps like
that. My hope would be that they'll either come up with a different
recurring segment or keep it to the more personal questions that worked a
little better, like asking Treasury which side of the street she would
walk on if a white person were walking on one side and a black person on
the other. (She sidestepped the question by saying it would be based on
which person was hotter, which somehow earned her an "I Kept It 100"
badge even though it neatly evaded the obvious point of the question.)



The panel stuff needs a little work, on the whole, but that's entirely to be expected. Panel discussions are really hard, and they take time to settle into.