Colin Slark
Team Member

he Nightly Show is late night comedy’s

newest show, hosted by Larry Wilmore,
the most recent graduate of The Daily Show to
receive their own program. Wilmore follows
in the footsteps of John Oliver and Stephen
Colbert, who both kept up the “fake news”
format in their own programs after leaving
The Daily Show, but Wilmore has tried to
change things up a little bit. Unfortunately,
The Nightly Show suffers from this deviation
from the usual format, making it consistently
mediocre.

Like the other Daily Show related programs,
the first segment of The Nightly Show is
dedicated to making fun of current events
and the apparatus of American journalism.
Every episode has a specific topic that guides
the discussion from start to finish and, like
he did on his appearances on The Daily Show,

Wilmore has a special interest in racial issues.

It is nice to see a non-white late night
host tackle some of these issues, but he’s

not particularly funny. He is not as witty

as Jon Stewart, does not go as in-depth as
John Oliver, and his commentary is not as
biting as Stephen Colbert. You get the sense
that unlike some of his colleagues, we are
seeing the real Larry Wilmore on screen
and not a characterized version of himself,
but the real Larry Wilmore is not that
interesting when interpreting the news.

The second segment on The Nightly Show is
unique for late night television. Four people,
a mix of celebrities, media personalities,
activists, and Nightly Show staff members
join Wilmore every episode for a panel
discussion on the episode’s topic. Wilmore’s
guests constantly surprise me, as they have
interesting and intelligent discussions on
serious topics like the anti-vaccination

movement and the thaw in US-Cuba relations.

Even better is that for some panels, The
Nightly Show invites people with dissenting
or unpopular opinion to have a say. For
instance, the discussion about vaccination
featured an anti-vaccination activist.

The problem here is that Wilmore is

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The Nightly Show|

not a very good moderator. Wilmore is
capable of asking thoughtful questions

of his guests, but he has a bad habit of
cutting them off as soon as they start to
answer in order to crack a joke, leading to
occasional bouts of uncomfortable silence.

Wilmore needs to decide if he wants the
panel to be five people at a table joking
around or five people around a table having
intelligent conversation and stick to it. The
option in-between is frustrating to watch.
It is not impossible to make something

that is not traditionally comedic funny, but
Wilmore is not succeeding. Wilmore should
instead be looking towards the example set
by Last Week Tonight. John Oliver took the
normally serious format of investigative
journalism and made it fun to watch.

The third segment of The Nightly Show is the
hardest to watch. Wilmore asks his guests to
“Keep it 100” as in, “Keep it 100% honest” and
then asks them weird or awkward questions.
If Wilmore and the audience judge the
panelist to have been honest, Wilmore awards
them a sticker that proudly announces that

the person has “Kept it 100”. If Wilmore and
the audience judge the panelist to have been
dishonest or to have avoided the question,
Wilmore throws a tea bag at them and
declares them to have spouted “weak tea”.

It seems as this segment has been designed
carefully to be the show’s signature moment,
to be what really sets it apart from the
other late night talk shows. Instead of
being unique, though, it smacks of being
artificial. Some of the guests are clearly
uncomfortable being asked silly Sophie’s
Choice type questions, while the panelists
who are actors or comedians try too hard
to give answers that straddle the line
between outlandishly goofy and offensive.

The Nightly Show is simply not as good

as the show that spawned it, or as good

as any of the other shows by Daily Show
alumni. It is not worth trying out in its
current state. If The Nightly Show manages
to decide what kind of show it wants to be
and stick with a direction, it may be worth
checking out sometime in the future.