Week 70.

After a week off, the boys of LNT are back. And no, we’re not going to talk about that Fast & Furious thing, no matter how much you might ask. We’re also not willing to talk about Hannah Montana either. We would like to remind all you patriots out there that America is the best, however. Number one at being easily manipulated by even the most subpar of marketing schemes.

Isn’t it kind of amazing that Bernie Madoff got caught? Of course he was running a billion dollar Ponzi scheme, the same people he was ripping off just gave Billy Ray Cyrus’s useless daughter $30 million while at the same time spending $27 million on Vin Diesel and Paul Walker acting. Awesome. Well, we understand. You had a week of reruns to sit through, of course you had to get your kids out of the house last weekend. Luckily, this week we’re all back with new episodes (Carson notwithstanding), so scroll on down and let’s all try to do a little better this weekend:

Monday:

• The Tonight Show With Jay Leno - Sen. John McCain, Kristin Chenoweth, Billy Ray Cyrus
• The Late Show with David Letterman - Zac Efron, Mike Golic & Mike Greenberg, A.C. Newman w/ Nicole Atkins
• Late Night with Jimmy Fallon - Denis Leary, Jill Hennessy, Sara Watkins & John Paul Jones
• The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson - Dwight Yoakam, Mary McCormack
• Jimmy Kimmel Live - Ben Affleck, Lily Allen
• Last Call with Carson Daly - Adam Scott, Renee Gauthier, Cold War Kids

STEPHAN: Adam Scott is a good example of how frustrating being an actor must be. IMDb says he’s been acting since 1994 but he didn’t even get a chance to really shine until The Aviator in 2004. Then he didn’t even get to be funny until Knocked Up. This dude was the best part of Role Models and he was great in Eastbound and Down, but it took 13 years for anyone to even figure it out. Now he’s stuck being fantastic on Starz (you should be watching Party Down by the way). Meanwhile, Ben Affleck is still acting in movies. Good times.

ERECH: That’s a pretty big show for Leno. If I was a Leno fan, I’d be all over that show. McCain will be fielding all manner of insane questsions, including Palin ones for the rest of his life. Kristin Chenoweth is as lovely and funny as they come. And well that last guy, look, I don’t like him but I know people do. In some bizarro universe, there is a me that is super excited for this episode of The Tonight Show. The me of this universe however, is not.

Jimmy2 has Denis Leary on tonight, and I wonder if any of the bacon/Jim Gaffigan stuff is going to get brought up? Fallon doesn’t seem ready to rock the boat yet, so I doubt it, although I’m sure he’s aware of it, internet nerd that he is.

CONTROVERSY!

Tuesday:

• The Tonight Show With Jay Leno - Jamie Foxx, Carol Leifer, the Airborne Toxic Event
• The Late Show with David Letterman - Kelly Ripa, Bill Scheft, Yeah Yeah Yeahs
• Late Night with Jimmy Fallon - Tom Brokaw, Tim Heidecker & Eric Wareheim, Akon
• The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson - Adam Goldberg, Anna Gunn, Brett Dennen
• Jimmy Kimmel Live - Jorge Garcia, the latest “Dancing with the Stars” castoff, Mims
• Last Call with Carson Daly - Adele

ERECH: Speaking of internet nerds… I remember a few weeks back seeing Tim Heidecker and Jimmy Fallon exchanging tweets back and forth, and how impressed I was at how complimentary Fallon was being. He does have good taste! And then he invited Tim on the show in what I thought at the time was just a “lets do lunch” sort of response. Guess that must have worked out though, because here he is, along with Eric Wareheim too.

And if you are having trouble understanding anything I just typed above, you should just leave this website forever because it’s not for you. (internet snobbery ftw!)

STEPHAN: Really good Letterman tonight too. Kelly Ripa means lots of Regis talk. Then Bill Scheft is going to talk about the strike or something I guess. Maybe he’s doing standup? Anyways, then we get to watch Dave Letterman respond to Karen O. Good times.

Wednesday:

• The Tonight Show With Jay Leno - Don Rickles, Richard Engel, Chris Botti feat John Mayer
• The Late Show with David Letterman - Drew Barrymore, Neko Case
• Late Night with Jimmy Fallon - Ice-T, Elmo, Morgan Webb, Yeah Yeah Yeahs
• The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson - Michael Caine, Matt Baetz
• Jimmy Kimmel Live - Christina Applegate, Mike Tyson, Dana Gould
• Last Call with Carson Daly - The Duke Spirit

STEPHAN: Dana Gould!

If I could remember our Amazon affiliate information this would be a link to Dana’s fantastically funny new special Let Me Put My Thoughts in You.

ERECH: So seriously, what is the deal with Carson? Stephan mentioned it a few weeks back I know, how Last Call has just been recycling footage of old interviews and performances with Carson tacking on new intros. How is that a show? Have people just decided to stop going on and they’ve plum run out of guests (wait, when did I adopt a southern online persona)? This is just crazy. I cannot believe NBC can’t find anything better to fill this slot with. Some non-traditional humor maybe, done much cheaper. Smaller set, not filled with hundreds of worthless audience members, no need for a band and 20 writers to tell the same stupid joke every night. Seriously, NBC, hire Stephan and I and it will cost you almost nothing to put us on the air, and I can promise we’ll get at least as good ratings as Carson Daly here is. Ok… maybe not. But we will be cheaper.

Sheesh.

Fallon has a pretty amazingly bad show there. A host with a few more chops might be able to pull of this circus, but I just don’t think young James has it in him. Ice T will say things so clearly insane you’ll want to throw things at your tv, yet not get called on it. Elmo will be a turlet-mouth, because that’s what Elmo does when kids aren’t in the room. And Morgan Webb? Any one or thing attached to that non-station G4 (HAI GUISE, WANNA WATCH RERUNS OF COPS AND GREMLINS ALL WEEKEND?!) gets my forever seal of disapproval.

Also, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs suck too. Sorry hipsters, it’s true.

Thursday:

• The Tonight Show With Jay Leno - Jessica Alba, Bob Saget, Jonny Lang
• The Late Show with David Letterman - Matthew Perry, Elisha Cuthbert, Rascal Flatts
• Late Night with Jimmy Fallon - Rachel McAdams, Michael Emerson, Matthew Stafford, Solange
• The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson - Madeleine Albright, Amy Smart
• Jimmy Kimmel Live - Zac Efron, Patti Stanger, Pete Yorn
• Last Call with Carson Daly - Lykke Li

ERECH: Madeleine Albright on F-Craiggers is too weird to pass up. I am definitely going to tune in.

Letterman has been struggling some this week, but tonight looks like it might be ok. Perry is a nice enough guy, and Elisha Cuthbert is cute and not nearly as dumb as her other blonde WeirdOwood counterparts. Rascal Flatts is where that streak of middling ends though, as the whole show takes a dump on itself retroactively. ABORT ABORT SAYS I!

STEPHAN: Leno has a perfect lineup for people who like the Tonight Show with Jay Leno. Jessica Alba is absolutely worthless as a talker but she looks good so Leno can hit on her awkwardly, Bob Saget will spend his eight minutes trying to make everyone think he’s edgy with toilet talk, and finally Johnny Lang will remind everyone why blues guitar is boring no matter how talented the person performing it is. Good times. The real question is why Jimmy2 has four guests again? He has a team of very funny people writing for him. Why don’t they get to be funny? Is four minutes of Michael Emerson or Matthew Stafford going to really make someone tune in? Is that hitting some Tivo wishlist or something? I don’t understand this move.

Friday:

• The Tonight Show With Jay Leno - Charles Barkley, Leslie Mann
• The Late Show with David Letterman - Russell Crowe
• Late Night with Jimmy Fallon - Matthew Perry, Adam Goldberg, Plain White T’s
• The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson - Jessica Lange, Tom Lennon, Martina McBride
• Jimmy Kimmel Live - Four-year-old memory expert Pranav Veera, Franz Ferdinand
• Last Call with Carson Daly - Ben Harper & Relentless7

STEPHAN: Do you know anyone who’s actually seens a Russell Crowe movie since Gladiator? Yeah, me neither. Acting is a weird profession. At least the Round Mound of Rebound is going to be on Leno tonight. Charles has been really good on TNT since he quit drinking. Although since he was good before too that probably has more to do with Gary Payton and Chris Webber’s phenomenal NBATV show. Competition is good people. And Gary Payton is great. That dude doesn’t seem to have an off switch. This playoff season is going to be epic.

ERECH: Fergie is closing out strong this week, with another highly watchable eppie. Jessica Lange has seen and done enough interesting things to make her a good guest. Also, she’s kind of a GILF. Tom Lennon is clearly a “funny dude”, and Martina McBride is well… I mean what the hell is up with all these crappy country musical guests this week? The redneckification of America has gotten way out of hand, I need to go bury myself in a John Singleton marathon this weekend or something.

Like Stephan said, Leno will be ok if for Barkley alone, but the rest of the night isn’t looking so hot to me.

Maybe we should have taken another week off before coming back… ?

Despite what the boys of Late Night Thing might joke about, they’re happy to be back. And happy that you wanted them back too! All the emails and tweets and such asking where we were last week, it was so sweet. So. Sweet!

But it’s back to business time, not a moment to spare with patting ourselves on the back and saying “Good job!”. Nope. Down here at Murdershow Headquarters we don’t even have any mirrors on the walls, that’s how un-vain we keep it. So what if our hair is all messed up, we can’t be distracted from our mission long enough to care!

Speaking of our mission, it’s time for reader mail!

Baldur in the UK says:

Over here in the UK we don’t get to see your talk shows as easily as some may like, especially with sites like Hulu blocking anyone not in the US. How would suggest a lad go about easily seeing some of these amazing shows on a regular basis?

Baldur, we’re sorry Hulu doesn’t work for you, or other people not in the US, because that was going to be our answer for you. Sometimes the internets really let us down. Assuming you’ve already tried using a proxy to get around it, I suppose you could try the official sites for the shows, all reachable via abc, nbc, and cbs dot com’s. We’re not sure what the international laws are for that, but it’s worth a shot. All else fails, then we say you just throw legality in “the bin” (hehe, we learned that from The IT Crowd!) and just go torrent yourself some late night goodness. Sites like thepiratebay, demonoid, and even mininova all should have torrents of recent episodes of our favorite shows easily accessible and fully seeded for fast download. And hey, if you speak german/austrian/icelandic or whatever crazy words those are, you can always check out www.latebyte.nl too, we’ve certainly turned there in the past for our illegal talk show needs too.

As always readers, good luck, and remember we’re here to help you steal as much as you can from the greedy conglomerates of Worldwide Pants, Conanco and Big Chin LLC.

LNT - Sticking it the medium-sized guy since day 1!

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