32nd week.

Normally this is where we’d talk about how great the new episode of the Venture Bros. was last night (and it totally was), but it’s reruns this week, and we’re having a hard time being motivated to do anything. We know you need something to get you through the week, but you’re going to have have a remarkably strong constitution to let that thing be late night television.

Maybe you could take up smoking or something? It’s not the best thing in the world for time passing, but it does make you look cooler (at least the teenagers that hang out in front of our building all look pretty cool), and you get to be a burden to your country with your outsized future medical bills, so we’re pretty sure that makes you a patriot too. As far as hobbies go, it’s not really that time consuming, and it gives you a good excuse to step away from your desk several times a day. That different perspective can be the only thing that keeps you sane, we’d argue, were this an actual argument and not some poorly-conceived screed we’ve all heard dozens of times before. Stupid rerun week.

Anyways, if you’re still with us, we’ll guide you through the week (probably), so scroll on down and enjoy the recycled magic:

Monday:

• The Tonight Show With Jay Leno - William Shatner, Chelsea Handler, Newton Faulkner
• The Late Show with David Letterman - Julia Roberts, Al Green
• Late Night with Conan O’Brien - Eddie Izzard, Morgan Spurlock, Tapes ‘n Tapes
• The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson - Steven Wright, Tricia Helfer
• Jimmy Kimmel Live - Kate Walsh, Jerry Springer, Chromeo

STEPHAN: Summertime is time to cheat apparently. We all already saw these (all of these). If you’re so desperate for something to watch that you’ll watch repeats of shows that weren’t particularly stellar to begin with, then I’m very sorry for you, and I doubt that television is really going to be able to help you much. Um, Steven Wright ain’t bad, and Hugh Hefner’s daughter is substantially more interesting than he is, or in fact the three bimbos that he lives with, so I guess Craiggers is the place to be?

ERECH: All reruns huh? Yeesh. Ok, well here we go then.

Tom Scharpling said of tonight’s Leno (back when it originally ran at the start of June) that it was the biggest back and forth of filthy double entendre’s by three of the least attractive people on Earth he’d ever seen. There’s a reason Tom is the host of the Best Show on WFMU, and that sort of insight is just one of the many.

I don’t think I like Eddie Izzard as much as I am supposed to, or at least as much as everyone around me pretends to. I saw his stand-up in the 90’s, I liked it well enough then, but I moved on. That said, I don’t remember actually watching any of this week of reruns on Conan when it first aired, so it’s gonna be like new episodes but with just really old news and jokes in it. Oh boy, Hillary pant-suit material here I come!!

Tuesday:

• The Tonight Show With Jay Leno - Will Smith, Pete Sampras, Ed Harcourt
• The Late Show with David Letterman - Jack Black, Esperanza Spalding
• Late Night with Conan O’Brien - Sarah Jessica Parker, Aries Spears, They Might Be Giants
• The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson - Richard Lewis, Duffy
• Jimmy Kimmel Live - Bill Cosby, John Leguizamo, Meagan Good, Secondhand Serenade

ERECH: Jimmy has a weird line-up tonight. Bill Cosby, who is way to good to be on this show. Then he has the increasingly awful Johnny Legz next, who hasn’t made a good movie this entire decade - go look at his iMDB page if you don’t believe me. And then Jimmy has some other people I don’t care about. I’ll tune in for Cosby, because again, I don’t even remember watching this whenever it ran, but I’m not expecting much.

Tonight’s drinking game will be played during the 40 minute mark of Conan, with the rules being you have to take a shot every time Aries Spears does an impersonation of a rapper. Double that when it’s Jay-Z or Snoop. Fair warning, you’re gonna get REALLY drunk tonight because that’s all that guy has in his arsenal. Blech.

STEPHAN: I would like to dare everyone to make it through Will Smith and Pete Sampras in one episode of Jay Leno’s America. Can not be done; not even with help. It doesn’t matter the combination, You + Chemicals < That Amount of Boring.

Sorry.

Wednesday:

• The Tonight Show With Jay Leno - Mike Myers, Abigail Breslin, David Cook
• The Late Show with David Letterman - Adam Sandler, Indianapolis 500 winner Scott Dixon, Donna Summer
• Late Night with Conan O’Brien - Patrick Stewart, Oliver Hudson, A.A. Bondy
• The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson - John Cusack, Parminder Nagra
• Jimmy Kimmel Live - Steve Carell, Jewel

STEPHAN: Picard was the only good thing about BBC2’s Award Winning Extras, so give him a go, no matter what he’s doing. All right, Harry Potter and his prophylactic was pretty funny too, but that’s a one-note joke, not an entire episode written by the team that made The Office sparkle.

ERECH: Sandler on Letterman tonight is a good rerun. Adam and Dave have a good rapport, and if you’re gonna watch nonsense tonight might as well start here. Speaking of nonsense, go read this and try not to roll your eyes as much as I did. There’s a reason LNT is the best column on the internet about late night, and that reason is because nobody else is even trying a little bit.

Oh, we’ll take a forfeit, believe you me we are not too good for that.

I can’t even think about what Patrick Stewart must be whoring for on Conan tonight, or anything he has even been in in the last 18 months. Some boring play maybe? Either way, I like Picard enough to watch this rerun, assuming I’m not passed out drunk by the time he comes on. You know what they say about assuming though…

Thursday:

• The Tonight Show With Jay Leno - Dustin Hoffman, Gordon Ramsey, Flobots
• The Late Show with David Letterman - Piedmont Bird Callers, Sarah Jessica Parker, the Republic Tigers
• Late Night with Conan O’Brien - Jeff Garlin, Dax Shepard, the Kills
• The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson - Virginia Madsen, Darin Strauss, John Hiatt
• Jimmy Kimmel Live - Charlize Theron, Guillermo del Toro, We the Kings

ERECH: I got nothin’. We’ve already talked about all these episodes, and most of them pretty recently too. That episode of Jimmy just ran last week I think, hit the archives if you wanna get a taste of what I thought about it the first time.

SIGH.

STEPHAN: I hit the archives and these episodes weren’t even that great when they were fresh. Dave dealing with “regular folk” is always funny, and we do like Charlize round these parts, but that’s not really a reason to watch anything again.

Friday:

• The Tonight Show With Jay Leno - Laura and Jenna Bush, David Cook, Tristan Prettyman
• The Late Show with David Letterman - America Ferrera, Russell Brand, ventriloquist Terry Fator
• Late Night with Conan O’Brien - Matthew Broderick, Michelle Monaghan, NASA contestant Brian Turner
• The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson - Hugh Laurie, Michael Starr
• Jimmy Kimmel Live - Mike Myers, Paul Pierce, the All For Nots

STEPHAN: Does ABC own part of The Love Guru? Didn’t that episode just air? Why play it again? It’s quite clear that America is sick of Mike Meyers (the extra “e” is for “suck”), so pushing him on us again this soon, isn’t even ironically fun. Say what you want, but the Mouse is dumb. Seriously. They could have bought Pixar for $5 million back in the 80s, but instead decided that no one would ever sit through a CGI movie (probably because technology is cyclical). Since they eventually paid over $7 billion for the company just 20 years later, they were clearly correct (especially since they already owned the characters for each of the movies through Cars).

ERECH: Myers on Jimmy was really disturbing to watch, when it originally aired like last Wednesday. Trying to sell the mess that was The Love Guru, the weekend AFTER it had already flopped, it was just rough. Say what you will about the guy, or his movies, but it’s never fun to watch someone have to pretend to care about a project as much as Mike and Jimmy do tonight. Oh wait, IT IS FUN TO WATCH, nevermind. Mike is just battered, and literally repeats the same stories he’s told on every talkie for the last 4 weeks, almost verbatim. Jimmy on the other hand is lying through gritted teeth when he says the movie looks funny, and is clearly just doing this mess as a favor to someone for something. Ouch.

I’m definitely not watching any of the programs tonight though, so I might as well not even pretend to give you kind folks any sort of recommendations about it then, right? It’s bleak out there kids, bleak.

Gah!

So that was… something. Or possibly nothing. Instead of watching the talkies this week, maybe it might be time to get yourself a new hobby. Drinking is already a given, that is if you’re reading this far into things. And lets face it, if you haven’t already started your own Late Night Thing Officially Licensed TV Club offshoot yet, you probably aren’t going to, either. Really though, you’ve got no reason not to - this is the time to catch up on TV-DVD’s, have you seen the shows the networks are giving us? A couple of shows about dancing, some thing where a-holes give their babies to younger a-holes and somehow nobody goes to jail, celebrity circus acts featuring people who are more unheard of than celebrated, hillbilly idol, and then the choreographed dance/karate/juggling routines of America’s Barely Got Any of them Talents. If that’s not reason enough to not only stop watching tv period, but to also throw your television out a friggin’ window, then LNT doesn’t know what is.

Movies aren’t as awful as they were earlier this year though. Sure, we have stuff like Meet Dave, Journey to the Center of the Earth, The Rocker, The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor and The X-Files: I Want to Believe to navigate around. But we also have The Dark Knight, Hellboy II: The Golden Army, Step Brothers and (depending on how you roll…) X-Files: I Want to Believe to look forward to. OK, we know we can’t lie to you, that’s not a great line-up either. Even though it’s not great, there is some hope. If you haven’t seen Wall*E yet, you should - because it’s amazing. And if you still want to give Marvel money, Iron Man is just as good the third time as the fourth, so there is always that.

What LNT is trying to say is… things are only going to get worse from here on out people. Next week, Jay and Conan are back to work, so there will be some new meat on the bone, but given the prospects of all the bad movies coming out and all the bad tv on the air right now, new episodes or not they’re probably gonna be L’s. Summer is a bad time for the talkies, and so it’s a bad time for LNT. Maybe Stephan & Erech should take a few weeks off too?

No.

Things will pick up at the end of August, and with tv coming back soon after that, we all have something to look forward to. But for now, oh boy, the dog days of summer are here, AND HOW.

In the meantime, READ THE LNT ARCHIVES!