The morning after Fox News debuted in the middle of the night comedy, comedian Ron Funches summed up the general reaction of tweeting: “Gutfield will renew himself with the hatred of comedians watching alone.”
Greg Gutfeld – a former co-host of Fox News’ The five who is known for bold comments like minimizing the cost of war, rejecting obvious racism and shamelessly pissing Donald Trump off – a new 11 pm show premiered on Monday night called Gutfeld! Your Headline evokes Jeb Bush’s failed presidential campaign and the logo design seems to directly resemble the Garfield comics such as comedian Tim Heidecker highlighted before transmission.
“I am as dizzy as Kamala Harris explaining children in cages,” Gutfeld told viewers at the beginning of the show. “Or Woody Allen hearing about children in cages.” From there, he presented bizarre “parodies” of MSNBC’s Brian Williams, reporting “from the surface of Mars” (referring to a six-year-old media scandal, what a topic) and a misinterpreted CNN panel in which two whites accused each other of being racist.
Given that Gutfeld used his opening monologue to directly attack the great late-night hosts he “should be competing” with, accusing Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel and Jimmy Fallon of being essentially risk-averse, flattering crying babies and “playing” that Trevor Noah and Seth Meyers “fled to be obscure together”, we decided to ask some real comedians to criticize their attempts at “comedy”.
Notably absent from the dawn presenters on Gutfeld’s shit list was Bill Maher from HBO, perhaps because the mockery “New Rules” that end each episode of Real time seem to be his biggest inspiration.
Old Daily Show producer – and current Oscar nominee for writing Borat Subsequent Moviefilm—Jena Friedman immediately recognized the similarities, telling The Daily Beast: “It’s like watching a guy going through a divorce making a Bill Maher impression,” adding, “Your impression of Bill Maher is not bad!”
“He reminds me of the boss whose jokes you are forced to laugh at,” she continued. “I didn’t think it was bad for someone who never did comedy … just a little bit bitter and angry.”
“Just because something has the cadence of a joke doesn’t mean it’s a joke,” Night show writer Sasha Stewart added, before also referring to the warm laughter that could be heard in the background. “I’m sorry for the five employees who make up the laughter trail. I know they are employees because it is the kind of sharp, aching laugh from a person who barely gets enough to be there. “
Conan writer Laurie Kilmartin was reluctant to directly criticize the “competition”, but she tweeted this “promotion” of the show before it aired:
And Blaire Erskine, who is best known for his videos mocking MAGA on Twitter, most of the time had a lot of questions. “Why does he call himself ‘GG’ as if he were someone’s grandmother?” she imagined. “Why do I feel like he’s reading his opening manifest on the teleprompter for the first time? But more importantly, why is he holding a clipboard holding what appears to be a stack of empty file folders? “
Former White House speechwriter Jon Lovett, who wrote some of the best jokes from Barack Obama’s White House Correspondent Dinner and offers his own version of an evening monologue every week on his podcast Lovett or leave it, found some humor in Gutfeld’s claim to be doing something “different” than any other prime-time Fox show.
“I love a monologue about being brave enough to face the culture of cancellation. FINALLY, someone is willing to say at 11 what was also said at 8, 9 and 10. Greg will not be silenced! ”Lovett told us. “The whole thing is very embarrassing. Fox News is bad. “But then, to top it off, he added,” I approve of all Woody Allen jokes. “
Anthony Atamanuik, from The President Show fame, was equally perplexed by the anti-corporatist discourse that occupied the second half of Gutfeld’s monologue. “It was a confusing wander containing five-year reference jokes woven in a toothless and toothless ‘position’ against social media and corporations that ended with an impotent and humorless snap of self-importance,” he said.
Others were less willing to pay attention to Gutfeld. Reached for comment, old Night show Host Larry Wilmore responded with two words: “No, thanks.”
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