Sweeps Month Alert!

Get ready for some good shows finally. The confluence of sweeps, Oscar bait movie time, and Christmas sales makes November a particularly strong month (and ultimately frustrating as let’s be honest, most of the stuff we’re being sold is terrible) month in the Late Night Verse.

Before we get to that greatness, we’d like to take a second to do a quick book review. Neil Strauss is going to be on Carson on Friday. Obviously, none of you are going to watch since not only does no one watch Carson, but those of you who know who Strauss is, can’t stand the guy (and with good reason). However, we’re still going to plug one of his books. Strauss’s “The Game” seems like a manual on how to seduce women. He, a nerdy newspaper writer sneaks into the world of pickup artists, and meets world class douche, Mystery. Mystery teaches Strauss how to pick up women at clubs using specific and repeatable strategies and tricks. The first half of the Game, then, is Strauss learning the pickup techniques from a cadre of bizarre pick-up artists each with their own jargon and methodology. Strauss puts those styles together and forms his own seemingly successful methodology. “The Game” however, takes a turn as Strauss realizes that even though he’s gained a lot of confidence and can successfully coordinate a one night stand, the strategies he’s learned don’t translate to a real relationship or any kind of actual happiness. Strauss seems to be the only subject in the book to get out happily (he has a long term girlfriend at the end of the book, but in 2006, she leaves him for Robbie Williams, so really no one wins in the end). Mystery even has a nervous breakdown.

It’s a phenomenal story soured by Strauss’s public image as a pickup artist, offering pickup seminars and still hanging out with Mystery and guys like Dave Navarro. Don’t let that ruin the book for you. Strauss has also started a book club for members of his email list (the same schlubs trying to learn how to pick up club sluts). And this is nothing like Oprah’s book club, he’s got these guys reading actual books like “Finnegan’s Wake” and “Anna Karenina.” See, it’s not all furry top hats, goggles, and no shirts.

And now let’s get to those listings:

Monday:

• The Jay Leno Show - Mariah Carey, a performance from Cirque du Soleil’s “Kooza”
• The Tonight Show With Conan O’Brien - Ewan McGregor, Shaun White, Tegan & Sara
• The Late Show with David Letterman - Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Guy Fieri, Carrie Underwood
• Late Night with Jimmy Fallon - Taylor Swift, Scott Wolf, Say Anything
• The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson - Billy Connolly, George Eads, Jack Ingram
• Jimmy Kimmel Live - Jack Black, Chuck Liddell, Cobra Starship (R)
• Last Call with Carson Daly - Jennifer Morrison, Zane Lamprey, Arctic Monkeys (R)

STEPHAN: From first to worst on Letterman tonight. It’s a steep drop-off once America’s Hottest and Funniest Billionaire gets off the stage. Guy Fieri, seriously? As Bourdain says, he’s Poochie. He should be stuck talking to Carson Daly in some empty club or an extreme bike shop or whatever other dumb place Daly thinks is extreme, not going on Letterman. C’mon Dave! You’re better than this. It’s not like you’re Fallon and you have no say in having Taylor Swift as your first guest.

ERECH: Watching Craiggers and Billy Connolly try to out-scottish… err irish… whatever - each other will be fun. Also, isn’t it weird I knew Boondock Saints 2: Still Boondockin’ was a real thing but NO idea it was coming out this soon? I assume Connolly is actually in that, because I cannot imagine any other reason he’d be the A guest on anyone’s show on a Monday night. That’s not a good sign AT ALL.

Hey, remember when Connolly took over for Howard Hessman on Head of the Class? Me too, me too.

Tuesday:

• The Jay Leno Show - Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Katie Featherston & Micah Sloat
• The Tonight Show With Conan O’Brien - Neil Patrick Harris, Paul Teutul Sr., Creed
• The Late Show with David Letterman - Al Gore, Brad Paisley, Top 10 list presented by Michael Buble
• Late Night with Jimmy Fallon - Matthew Broderick, Chad Ochocinco, Reba McEntire
• The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson - Verlerie Bertinelli, Dave Barry
• Jimmy Kimmel Live - Pamela Anderson, “Dancing with the Stars” castoffs, Manny Pacquiao, White Rabbits
• Last Call with Carson Daly - Alice Cooper, La Roux

ERECH: Conan letting Creed anywhere near his studio is the EXACT reason this has happened. Hey, I’m no doomsayer or anything of the sort - I fully expect Conan and crew to turn this thing around at some point, and for the show to be amazing again. When that is going to happen though isn’t really clear to me. The show has been going downhill since Day 1, but NBC has been in so much denial you’d think it was the Bush Jr. presidency. And I’m not even sure what to suggest to get things on the right track either, as I am fast approaching the end of that certain demographic anyways (sob, OLD). It doesn’t make matters better when everything I like about the show is the stuff that the show is paying the least amount of attention to as well.

That show is just a wreck, even more so than Leno (who seems to be ok UGH “taking it on the chin” for NBC if you’re to believe this interview) by far because who really thought that was going to be good? (well, besides me.) Tonight Show Conan had such promise of new, and yet blah. So bland. So boring. Who cares.

And speaking of wrecks, watch around the 55 second mark to watch someone walk right into one!

STEPHAN: Good news, guys! Pamela Anderson is apparently still alive! How exciting is Ferguson tonight? Bertinelli is boring and useless and Craig is going to ask her weird questions and wring some entertainment out of her. Then Dave Barry is going to come on and explain why newspapers are dying. Okay, so really he’s just going to try to sell his new book. Unfortunately for him, it’s not 1989 any more and he’s stuck writing tween books for Disney. Ouch.

Wednesday:

• The Jay Leno Show - Jena Bush Hager, Laura Bush
• The Tonight Show With Conan O’Brien - Amy Poehler, Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, the Bravery
• The Late Show with David Letterman - Bill Cosby, Ryan Bingham
• Late Night with Jimmy Fallon - Cameron Diaz, Shaun White, Monsters of Folk
• The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson - Mo’Nique, Stephen Fry
• Jimmy Kimmel Live - Joshua Jackson, Big Bird, Slayer
• Last Call with Carson Daly - Julie Benz, Aron Kader

STEPHAN: Even though Kimmel (and to a lesser extent, Ferguson) have the range tonight, it’s all Zone for me. Poehler is great, but you can’t beat Magic and Bird. You just can’t.

ERECH: I’m always ready to watch The Cos sit and chat, even if he has had nothing slightly funny or interesting to say for the last 3, no definitely 4, years. Still, he has earned my lifelong respect and affections, even though I’ve actually heard that rap album he wrote that’s coming out next year. YIKES.

If there was ever any doubt about which way Leno leaned politically, this week and tonight specifically should put all that to rest. No wonder NBC is in last place. (and me and Stephan owe Moonvest ten thousand dollars to boot!)

Thursday:

• The Jay Leno Show - Wanda Sykes, Rachael Ray, Dan Finnerty & the Dan Band
• The Tonight Show With Conan O’Brien - Jim Carrey, Olivia Wilde, Zac Brown Band
• The Late Show with David Letterman - Bill Maher, Gabourey “Gabby” Sidibe, Keith Urban
• Late Night with Jimmy Fallon - Ian McKellan, Paula Patton, Yoko Ono, Sean Lennon
• The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson - Denis Leary, Jena Malone
• Jimmy Kimmel Live - Jesse Williams, Florence and the Machine
• Last Call with Carson Daly - Newt Gingrich, Ashley Fiolek, Matisyahu

ERECH: Sad but true, there are few late night interviews as funny as Jay Leno and Wanda Sykes. CLEARLY we know which of those two are bringing most of the “worth watching”, but Jay has his moments too. The rest of that show looks like a used diaper, but Wanda + Jay is good talkie for sure.

Morbid curiosity is going to get me to tune into Fallon tonight. There is no way Yoko and her kid are going to make anything even resembling listenable at the old 30 Rock, yeah? Sounds like a trainwreck to me, so I WOULDN’T MISS IT FOR THE WORLD.

STEPHAN: Ferguson has a weird “guests missing a consonant in their first name” show tonight. Skip that noise and tolerate some Grey’s Anatomy chump on Kimmel and super enjoy Florence and the Machine. That woman has a voice.

Friday:

• The Jay Leno Show - Elizabeth Banks
• The Tonight Show With Conan O’Brien - 3M/Discovery Young Science Challenge winner & finalists, The Pixies
• The Late Show with David Letterman - Ricky Gervais, Brian Regan, Ralph Stnaley and the Clinch Mountain Boys
• Late Night with Jimmy Fallon - Rosie O’Donnell
• The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson - Ewan McGregor, Regina Spektor
• Jimmy Kimmel Live - Ted Danson, Khloe Kardashian, Lamar Odom, Chickenfoot
• Last Call with Carson Daly - Neil Strauss, Brett Rogers, Peaches

STEPHAN: Is there anything better than watching Rosie O’Donnell pretending to be likable? What, anything else is better than that? Yeah, that’s a good point. Poor Fallon. Why do they even make him have guests? They should turn that show into the show Leno is pretending to do. Let Jimmy and his ridiculously great writing stuff loose doing a real variety show and stop bringing that show to a screeching halt because some dumb guest is trying to sell some dumb movie no one is going to watch.

ERECH: Ted Danson is AMAZING on Bored to Death, the new HBO series most of you aren’t watching yet. Get it together and get on board now, because that show is almost too good to be allowed to live much longer.

Can NEVER go wrong with Gervais and a Regan closing out the week on Letterman. Hello November, you’re starting off great.

And starting off great is what Late Night Thing is all about, because this outro is about to be AWFUL.

The sweeps are coming, and then we’re due for some major bouts of rerun. Sure, we’ve got the always fun “Guess the Pie” at the Letterman camp to look forward to, not to mention all that delicious food too. Remember, the boys at LNT like to soak their turkeys in gin before they cook them, so Thanksgiving is always extra saucy round the Murdershow HQ.

Luckily that turkeygin also serves as a wonderful chaser when watching awful movies, which the next 2 months will be full of.

1. A Christmas Carol: This is as bad as it’s going to get for awhile, folks. Fetish CGI gone awry - just from the trailers you can already tell this movie looks like something we’re all going to be amazed at how ugly it looks in just a few short years time - remember Tron? Jim Carrey, you know it’s ok that you don’t have to star in every horrible movie made, right? What, are you in a race with Eddie Murphy to completely drive away your fanbase? (you just pulled ahead, James)

2. The Box: Cameron “Pieface” Diaz and some dude what looks more like he should be playing her little brother than husband, in a movie about a magic button that kills random people if greedy assholes push it. Wait, this isn’t a documentary about the Bush administration? (booya!) Unless this movie is so high concept that the trailers could never possibly describe what the film is actually about, we here at LNT have decided that Richard Kelly should be ran out of Hollywoods by an angry mob of comic book creators tired of crappy screenwriters cribbing from their bread and butter and not giving credit!

3. 2012: If you want to see this movie, you should just bludgeon yourself to death with a VHS copy of Twister and save us the pain of having to live on the same planet as you anymore.

4. Armored: We almost feel guilty for picking on this flick, but since it’s no longer 1993 and we’re pretty sure that neither Larry Fishburne or Skeet Ulrich are allowed back in movies once they cashed their first CBS checks, we can’t figure out why this is being released to theaters at all. Seriously?

“A newbie guard for an armored truck company is coerced by his veteran coworkers to steal a truck containing $42 million. But a wrinkle in their supposedly foolproof plan divides the group, leading to a potentially deadly resolution.”

Oscar bait indeed.

5. Twilight New Moon: Bet you didn’t think we’d do it, right? Last year, Stephan & Erech steered plenty clear of making fun of Twilight and all the fans for a simple reason; it wasn’t for us. What, kids and teenagers aren’t allowed to have their own crappy genre flicks too? Of course they’re allowed, and we support that fully. Having grown up with the likes of The Last Starfighter, No Retreat No Surrender, and Commando, who are we to make fun of bad movies? But New Moon went and crossed the line by making itself bigger than it really is, and trying to hard to get the notice of adults, good and bad. Throw those dumb jerks on the covers of every Teen Beat and People magazine you want, but the moment they start showing up in places we frequent, then you’re calling out the wrath. Why should we know what this junk is? It’s made for pre-teens and good for em, but just like female homosexuality can’t you keep it AWAY from us?

And just look at how awful this thing looks. What, is this franchise suddenly strapped for cash? Couldn’t throw a few extra bucks into something that’s guaranteed to make 150million at the box office alone? That crass cheapness alone draws the Late Night Thing ire, and that’s why we had to stand up, say no more, and call it to the ground.

So that’s your movie going fare for the next few months, give or take the actual good flicks coming out (Fantastic Mr. Fox, Up in the Air and Ninja Assassin - DON’T JUDGE). Thank goodness for good TV then, right?

LNT - That last one was a gimme, a ninja movie and it’s not direct to dvd or from the 80’s? C’MON.

LNT ARCHIVES