Monday, November 21, 2005

He Moves in Mysterious Ways

My love of the Daily Show and its spinoff, the Colbert Report, has been pretty well documented on this webpage, but I can't say I've ever felt much love for its parent network, Comedy Central. As a broadcaster of syndicated reruns back in the nineties, they were pretty good. They would show Kids in the Hall and Mystery Science Theatre reruns and that was noble. Most everything else on the network tended to veer wildly between the okay and the horrendous, a status quo which continues to this day. I remember when the Daily Show was kind of crappy actually, when it starred the smarmy, pretty much talentless Craig Kilbourn rather than the heroic champion of justice Jon Stewart.

It's really disheartening to see something that purports to be the center of comedy dedicate itself to airing the "animated reality series" Drawn Together, which sounds mildly amusing at first, until you watch about ten seconds of it and then you have to take a shower for at least forty five minutes and multiple daily showings of movies like "Joe Dirt". It's depressing for someone who considers himself a mildly talented comic writer to be sure.

They have a new "Entertainment News" show that attempts to copy the Daily Show formula, and apparently they decided to copy it so exactly that they gave the hosting job at first to an unfunny smarmball, Joe Dirt star David Spade.

But last night I discovered that the show also employs Scott Adsit as a performer.

If you don't know who Scott Adsit is, that's because you have not been saved, for he is the Savior of Humanity, and the One True Messiah. He was a Second City Mainstage performer in the mid 1990's. My high school friends and I discovered him and all of us loved him, two of us began to actively worship him as The Living Incarnation Of All That Is Good In The Universe.

He is the funniest, smartest, and handsomest man on Earth. Were I in possession of a uterus, I would wish to bear ten thousand of his babies.

His also brilliant but not quite as much colleagues, such as Rachel Dratch, Tina Fey, and Adam McKay have all achieved a fair amount of notoriety in Hollywood, while Scott, despite a couple of appearances on the legendary Mr. Show, has mostly done Pizza Hut commercials and forty five second appearances on sitcoms. But now he has a semi-regular gig! In which he makes fun of actors who are in horrible movies! Okay, it's not great, but it's a step up.

I believe now that he has established his foothold, he will transform this network into a true Center of Comedy. By the end of 2006, he will sit atop a jewel encrusted golden throne, dispensing wise, just, and very, very funny laws. Jon Stewart will sit at his right hand. Beautiful maidens will feed him peeled grapes and his soldiers will wave Adam Carolla's severed head around on a pike. David Spade will be in charge of milkshake runs, although he will be supervised by someone slightly more trustworthy.

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