Week 31!

Home is Where the Hate is (the LNT HQ Tivo says it’s actually called My Dinner with Hatred)

The Venture Bros. seems to have shifted tone this season. The Astrobase Go! boys were given a two-year abeyance (and hopefully we’ll see that renewed again), and that seems to be informing the show. Instead of moving back into the adventure show mold we began the series with, we’ve further strayed into Something Big is Going to Happen, Just Wait mold. It’s like Flashback Island, only cartoonier (actually, that might be debatable).

These first four episodes were all world-building, and not much else. Fortunately, the Venture world is so great, that world building is not only completely acceptable, it’s downright welcome. Especially when stuff is still happening, like in this week’s installment of VB.

The Murderous Moppets truly live up to their names, they not only tried to kill 24, but they are planning on killing all the henchmen, then turning on at least the Monarch and potentially Lady Au Pair herself, Dr. Used-to-be-Girlfriend-Now-Wife. They also adorably sleep in a pet bed and got the line of the night, “Damn, even his dot is fat!”

Let’s not forget that Sgt. Hatred is now Rusty’s arch, and plans on treating him like a king, just so that the Monarch has to watch his sworn enemy finally find some happiness. Plus, he’s still a pederast. This might be the most impressive development of the season. Two previously throw-away lines coalesce into a new and important character. Last season (probably, could have been season 1) Hank implied that Sgt. Hatred bad touched the boys and we learned that the Monarch’s henchman were stealing parts from Hatred’s Hover-Tank. Neither of those things seemed important at the time, and yet here we are, with a fully formed character arching both of the “heroes” of the show (even if he’s arching Rusty in name only). Those Astrobase Go boys may not make the best t-shirts in the world, but they do make the best 22 minutes of solid entertainment each week.

Speaking of weekly entertainment, it’s still summer in the Late Night Televerse, and the bookings bear that out. Yeah, famous people still show up, but pretty much only the ones with terrible blockbusters to peddle. However, we here at LNT know you still have a lot of time you need to spend staring at your televisual box this week, and we’ll be glad to lead you through the minefield that is this week in Late Night Television:

Monday:

• The Tonight Show With Jay Leno - Sally Field, Jesse Ventura, Sleepercar
• The Late Show with David Letterman - Will Smith, Joe Buck
• Late Night with Conan O’Brien - Jonah Hill, John Tesh, Drive-By Truckers
• The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson - David Hasselhoff, Miriam Shor, Amos Lee
• Jimmy Kimmel Live - Seann William Scott, Emmanuelle Chriqui, N.E.R.D.

STEPHAN: Letterman has a great lineup for 1988. Joe Buck is still his father’s son full of vim and vigor, not yet the bloated douche trying to squeeze all the fun out of professional football. And Will Smith is still a rapper for the pre-teens. He hasn’t gone off to Scientology Heaven (In SH, you get to be a movie star, but all your movies are terrible, but you still win because people inexplicably put up with you. Also, you’re not gay anymore because you have a wife that everyone is afraid of.) Unfortunately, it’s 2008, so instead we get two guys too enveloped in their developed personalities to do anything remotely interesting. A bit of a shame that.

ERECH: So NBC isn’t even trying for the next 2-3, maybe even 4 weeks. It’s Olympics time again, and apparently NBC is cocky enough about this that they think they don’t have to bring it with anything but their few awful reality shows like America’s Got Buckteeth & Hey How Come Talentless People are Telling People With Talent What’s Up?. So why even run Jay, Conan and Carson at all then if it’s just reruns? Well, they probably won’t be running them much at all actually, at least once the games start and things run long and get preempted etc. So enjoy your time off, lads of late night, and you better effing bring it upon your return.

Before we move on though, let’s also get one last thing straight here NBC; nobody is tuning in to the Olympics because it’s on NBC. If the CW had the games this year people’d be burning through the tail-end of One Tree Hill to see the high jump, and if MyNetwork had em that Flavor Flav show’d be sitting on the bench for the next few weeks too. So put that in your pipe and smoke it Zucker for the next time you wanna try to pass someone like Blu Cantrell off as a celebrity contestant on anything other than a show called “Wait, Who In The Hell’re You?!“.

However, this whole NBC taking a nap thing is going to work out well for the fatman and the scot, as Yimmy and Craiggers are going to get a ton of spillage from stars wanting to push their awful wares, who’d not normally consider pushing it on either of these programs. So get ready for an all-star cavalcade on The Late Late Show and JK Live for the next few weeks.

Just not tonight though. Jimmy has his usual Monday rerun, with an ep from a week back that was awful then, and will be really awful tonight too. And Fergs has that deviant Hasselhoff on, some lady who has done a bunch of stuff I don’t know, and then some musical guest I don’t care about. Looks like I’ll be going to bed early, and I suggest you do the same thing America.

Tuesday:

• The Tonight Show With Jay Leno - Robin Williams, Terrence Howard, Serj Tankian & the FCC
• The Late Show with David Letterman - Charlize Theron, Richard Belzer, Motley Crue
• Late Night with Conan O’Brien - Martha Stewart, Lance Krall, Billy Bragg
• The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson - Chris O’Donnell, Lawrence Block, Phantom Planet
• Jimmy Kimmel Live - Adam Carolla, Peter Berg, Romany Malco, Billy Idol

ERECH: I guess maybe that whole big star thing with Jimmy I talked about yesterday isn’t happening until tomorrow. Why Carolla just doesn’t move in to the official co-host slot on this show, I dunno. He’s there friggin enough, yeah? Well tonight he’ll be pimping the DVD release of his boxing flick, The Hammer, which I hear is actually good. But I heard that about Tom Arnold’s The Kid & I too, and BOY DID I HEAR WRONG - yikes. Up next is Peter Berg, who I personally like, but I’m not really sure why - does he even do stuff anymore? The Rundown was kind of ok though, right? LNT’s own Romany Malco is turning up on the couch tonight too, which is a lot of guests including Billy Idol, right? Hopefully Romany is a little more comfortable tonight than he was last week on Conan, where although he was really funny, seemed to be pretty nervous about being there - take a deep breath and splash some cold water on your face, Ro!

Conan, even thought a rerun, is a pretty good one. Any time Martha Stewart and Conan get together, be assured you’re in for some good late night fun!

Craiggers has a bizarre line-up tonight that I am afraid to touch, so I’ll let Stephan take a swing at that (is that A-guest who I think it is?!):

STEPHAN: HBO was just playing Circle of Friends, so I guess it’s time for a Chris O’Donnell comeback. The nostalgia cycle is getting so small, it’s going to be the next generation’s irony. Remember when dramatic irony was a literary conceit and not an aspect of every single entertainment venue? (See what I just did there?) Just like irony is now everywhere to the point that we don’t even notice it, nostalgia is going to do the same and everything will be simultaneously revered and mocked. It’s going to be a mess. Until whatever happens that causes us to lose Earth-That-Was (Yes, I do think Firefly is a documentary, thank you for asking.), and then humans can start fresh, having nothing to do with Chris O’Donnell.

Wednesday:

• The Tonight Show With Jay Leno - Dana Carvey, Spencer Breslin, Priscilla Ahn
• The Late Show with David Letterman - Abigail Breslin, Barry Sonnenfeld, Tift Merritt
• Late Night with Conan O’Brien - John Krasinski, Bode Miller, Cobra Starship
• The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson - Sigourney Weaver, Stanley Bing, Three 6 Mafia
• Jimmy Kimmel Live - Mike Myers, Paul Pierce, the All For Nots

STEPHAN: How awesome is it that Mike Myers and Dana Carvey are still A-Guests? Neither has done anything remotely good in at least a decade, and yet here they are, still entertainment commodities. Fun. Of course, Leno might be theme-ing it this week, no doubt in honor of the Olympics. Monday night was people whose voices make your skin crawl (a great theme for a talk show), and tonight is people that if you actually thought about them, you’d totally hate them. Even Letterman can’t be bothered with any of these mutants.

ERECH: Ok, for Kimmel, tonight is a huge line-up. Mike Myers is gonna need to spin major to try and make The Love Guru’s previous weekend numbers at least steady, and then pray DVD sales aren’t nearly as horrendous, although how he plans to spin this that hard I dunno. With Wall*E and Wanted both opening, plus Get Smart probably landing in 3rd place, Myers’ mess will continue its plummet to Bombtown USA. Is anyone that surprised though? Sure, it has a lot of great and funny, awesome people in it. Down here at LNT HQ we have a giant Tiger Beat-esque poster of Stephen Colbert on one of the office walls, Romany Malco is awesome, Jim Gaffigan is always good for a laugh, Daniel Tosh is another favorite around the office as well, so what gives? Oh wait. Mike Meyers was the lead, and Jessica Alba was in it lots too? Oh, well there you go then.

How many consecutive flops is this for Alba now anyways, or does nobody even pay attention to that sort of stuff anymore? Just keep hoping she might flash half a teeter in a movie, and giving her roles until she does? Blech, she’s awful, and so are all of you!

Just chalk this up to another case of ALL OF AMERICA GETTING IT when nobody in Hollywood seems to though, and then scratches their collective heads wondering why something like this flops so badly when any Joe or Sally Flatfoot could’a told you as much 4 weeks back. Anyone remember the Heartbreak Kid? Well get ready to see it happen again in 2 weeks when Meet Dave opens to a paltry 7 million dollars too, and then come the following Monday a ton of articles telling us all why it’s our fault nobody goes to the movies anymore. Bet.

If only I could be a studio head for 1 week…

Thursday:

• The Tonight Show With Jay Leno - Justin Timberlake, Karen Allen, Sheryl Crow
• The Late Show with David Letterman - Mary-Kate Olsen, Jim Gaffigan, Gavin DeGraw
• Late Night with Conan O’Brien - Christina Applegate, Lewis Black, Stephen Curry
• The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson - James McAvoy, Bengt Washburn
• Jimmy Kimmel Live - Whoopi Goldberg, Fred Willard, Cyndi Lauper

ERECH: I like James McAvoy enough, he seems a nice guy, and he did a good job in that Yaphet Kotto bio-pic from a couple years back. Thing is, I have no interest in Wanted. Maybe if it’d been a big dumb superhero movie and stayed true to the comic (and literally had the final scene from it too - OH IF ONLY!!), I might be interested - if only for the trainwreck aspect of it all. But Wanted (the movie) just seems too pointless, as opposed to Wanted (the comic) - rimshot? Why then since they barely even adapted the comic at all did they even keep the title, or give Mark Millar dime 1? Because they really liked the name of the characters in the book? Bleh. STILL, any time you get 2 guys with funny accents together on late night, I’ll tune in, and I’d bet Craiggers is going to be great tonight.

I’m also highly curious to see what Mary-Kate will do or say tonight on Dave, and I’m not really sure why. Is that my inner TMZ coming out or something? How dare me!

STEPHAN: Dave has an anorexic who is famous now for being famous as a kid, followed by Jim Gaffigan, famous for his food bits, embarking on his “I’m Sorry for the Love Guru” tour. (Sin #1, not pronouncing “guru” correctly; you really have to hit that last syllable, Heinrich style.) That’s going to be an amazing green room situation.

Friday:

• The Tonight Show With Jay Leno - Jenna Fischer, Robert Schimmel, Trace Adkins
• The Late Show with David Letterman - Morgan Freeman, Kaley Cuoco, Wild Sweet Orange
• Late Night with Conan O’Brien - Seann William Scott, Tim Meadows, the Raconteurs
• The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson - Holly Hunter
• Jimmy Kimmel Live - Charlize Theron, Guillermo del Toro, We the Kings

STEPHAN: I just realized I’m a Charlize Theron fan. Just looking through the IMDB’s, I realized I have seen 93% of the movies she’s made. The Devil’s Advocate is the only one I’m willing to rewatch, but I’m not really sure what happened. I’ve never gone to the theater because she was in something, and other than Arrested Development, I didn’t actually remember her doing anything other than that movie Monster (which I did not care for or about). I guess what I’m saying is that I’m probably going to end up watching JKL tonight, and I’ll only remember Guillermo del Toro finally announcing a proper region 1 Cronos DVD.

ERECH: Jimmy has another grand-slam list of guests tonight, which he can thank entirely on NBC dropping the ball. Chaz is amazing, beautiful, funny, and hot, and I think I too am a stealth fan - I know I paid to see that one with her and the big monkey, no not Men of Honor, the one with Bill Pullman. And finally rounding things out (get it?) tonight, that fat mexican guy is a nutter and should be kind of a bit of fun to watch - imagine a harmless Tarantino if you will.

Other than that, tonight feels like a line-up routed by J. Walter Weatherman, ready to jump out from inside my tv at any moment to inform me that “This is why you shouldn’t be sitting at home watching bad tv on a perfectly good Friday night!”. Maybe I’ll go out and see that new Pixar flick, because if Wanted makes more than 30 million this weekend, I’m personally holding all of you responsible. Personally.

Lesson learned J. Walter, thanks.

And so comes to close another Late Night Thing. You knew what you were in for, and you got it. Righteous entertainment, think of LNT as hor d’ouvres before the big meal of the talkies. Every week, rain or shine, rerun or preemption, Stephan & Erech are here, just doin’ the damn thing. And what do you bring to the table? Pabst Blue Ribbon? Yuengling Black & Tan? COORS?!

To that very specific ridiculous reader out there who sent a case of Coors Light in to LNT HQ, as part of the official LATE NIGHT THING LOCAL SWILL contest, we just shake our heads. For shame you horrible person. Oh sure, Stephan & Erech drank it, gleefully, but if you think that’s what sort of billing it takes to make it to the top of the Local Swill contest, you are either sadly mistaken or just plain old mistaken too.

There’re only a few weeks left before the contest comes to an end, and meanwhile LNT HQ is abuzz with volunteers helping to campaign for Mt. Dew Supernova, because without it Erech just won’t be able to function anymore. It’s like watching Gore lose all over again, and even with a name like Voltage, nobody down here can understand why something that tastes like liquid Jolly Ranchers is actually so popular all across America. Sure, if it was just in Compton, Harlem or South Carolina, we’d understand. But Rhode Island? Who would have thought RI had so many diabetic people (see, you thought we were racists, when clearly LNT are actually fatists!)?

So until next week, keep sending in your beers, keep voting for Supernova at www.dewmocracy.com, and keep watching the programs. Because without you, and all of your comments and support, LNT couldn’t be possible.

Good night, and God Bless.

LNT ARCHIVES