TV Thread - beware, [expletive] can get spoilery

[Jocephus]

dave is a badass no doubt about it

[Jocephus]

[Jocephus]

[thrill]

...and now a world without Letterman, which I'm barely old enough to remember. I used to sneak out of bed late at night to watch him do dumb stuff. It felt dangerous, like I wasn't supposed to watch. I kept the volume low, sat inches from the set, ready to hit the power if my mom came out. I loved every second of Letterman.

That was my relationship with Late Night With Conan. Me and my buddies would all talk about the bits the next day at lunch.

[go birds]

i miss the days of mujibur and sirijul (sp) and ruperts deli. I dont guess he had those guys on recently did he? They were a long standing bit there for awhile

[Jocephus]

...and now a world without Letterman, which I'm barely old enough to remember. I used to sneak out of bed late at night to watch him do dumb stuff. It felt dangerous, like I wasn't supposed to watch. I kept the volume low, sat inches from the set, ready to hit the power if my mom came out. I loved every second of Letterman.

That was my relationship with Late Night With Conan. Me and my buddies would all talk about the bits the next day at lunch.

yeah i agree, that happened more with me regarding conan. i'm just glad i had letterman parents so letterman was on if/when we were up late as youngin's.

[33anda3rd]

Y'know, if there had been YouTube in the 80s, Letterman would have been the single biggest star on earth. He'd have landed the Tonight Show. Leno would be a Vegas act. And what's funny is Letterman's show wasn't engineered that way. Unlike Fallon, where most of the bits seem like they are built to be internet clips. Letterman, all those wacky, stupid bits in the early days were part of the larger Show he was building. It's own universe of people and attitudes and general weirdness and irreverence. I didn't really care if a big Hollywood star came on. I was hoping for Larry "Bud" Melman.

Or Super Dave Osborne, and the running gag of bringing Dave an awesome gift and Paul a crappy one, then hawking some ridiculous book.

Or Chris Elliott just being Chris Elliott

Or Pekar and "just keep me on for 10 more minutes" and calling Dave a corporate shill in maybe the greatest Letterman moment.

[ghostrunner]

I wasn't a Leno fan and will always prefer Dave. I did the same thing, watching Dave on a tiny portable black and white tv in my bed at night. But I'm not sure that's completely fair to Leno. My understanding is that Leno was well admired by most comics before he got hired on the Tonight Show. Worked all the time, and was more of a true standup than Dave, who never really excelled in that format. I wonder if he hadn't gotten the gig if his reputation among comics would have been better.

[Jocephus]

jay also had that ruthless manager

youtube used to house that HBO version, "the late shift" in like 12 parts. i always liked it as a movie, even though i dont think dave cared for it.

[33anda3rd]

I don't mean to undersell Leno in the least. A great comic by all accounts.

I mean to say, consider the times we live in where things on the internet run hot for 24 hours. The last two weeks everyone is a BB King and Letterman fan. How many BB King videos were in your Facbook timeline before last week? How many friends were talking about BB King online? Not to undersell BB King or say people didn't like him, just, he died and he's hot on the internet for 24 hours. Letterman quits and he's hot on the internet for a week.

What I'm saying rather is the massive greatness of Letterman and what would have been had viral video been a thing in 1984. Take all those old Letterman bits. The Alka Seltzer suit. The PEAS thing. The watermelon toss. Pointing the camera into the office building across the street. Mujibur and Sirajul. Put that in the YouTube generation and Letterman has a viral video about once every 3 days. Some bizarre, weird thing no one has ever seen before getting a couple million views before noon the morning after it happens and everyone on Facebook, Twitter, GRB, reddit would be talking about it. The benefit of viral video would have made Dave huge to the point that Leno (great comic) couldn't possibly compete for Carson's chair. He'd have been a phenomenon out of the gate instead of a circus-roadshow curiosity with a medium-ish following.