The morning after Fox News premiered its deeply entertaining foray into the comedy space at night, comedian Ron Funches summed up the general reaction of piulant: “Gutfield will be renewed from comics they hate to see alone.”
Greg Gutfeld, a longtime host of Fox News’ The Five who is known for his nervous comments such as minimizing the cost of war, ruling out obvious racism and sucking Donald Trump without cheating, premiered Monday night a new 23:00 show Gutfeld! Its title evokes the failed presidential campaign of Jeb Bush and the logo design looks directly like Garfield comics, such as comedian Tim Heidecker highlighted ahead of the broadcast.
“I’m as dizzy as Kamala Harris counting the kids in cages,” Gutfeld told viewers at the top of the show. “Or Woody Allen hears about kids in cages.” From there, he presented bizarre “parodies” of MSNBC’s Brian Williams, which reported “from the surface of Mars” (referring to a six-year media scandal, as it is today) and a mock CNN, in which two whites each accused each other of being racist.
Given that Gutfeld used his opening monologue to directly attack the great night hosts against whom “he is supposed to compete,” accusing Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel, and Jimmy Fallon of being essentially risk-averse, funny creatures, and ” joking that Trevor Noah and Seth Meyers have “run away together to be obscure,” we decided to ask some comedians to criticize their attempts at “comedy.”
HBO’s Bill Maher was especially absent from the night’s hosts on Gutfeld’s shit list, perhaps because of the “New Rules” mockery that ends each episode of Real time seems his biggest inspiration.
Old Daily show producer and current Oscar nominee for writing Borat Posterior Moviefilm—Jena Friedman instantly acknowledged the similarities and told The Daily Beast, “It’s like watching a boy go through a divorce making an impression of Bill Maher,” adding, “His impression of Bill Maher is not bad!”
“It reminds me of whose head is made to laugh with its jokes,” he continued. “I didn’t find it bad for someone who has never done comedy … just a little bitter and angry.”
“The fact that something has the cadence of a joke doesn’t make it any joke,” the ex said Night show added writer Sasha Stewart, before also referring to the lukewarm laughter that could be heard in the background. “I am sorry for the five employees who make up the laughter track. I know they are personal because it is a kind of sharp and painful laughter from a person who barely earns enough to be there.
Conan writer Laurie Kilmartin was reluctant to directly criticize the “competition,” but tweeted this “promotion” for the show before it aired:
And Blaire Erskine, who is best known for her MAGA-mocked Twitter videos, had mostly a lot of questions. “Why is she called ‘GG’ as if she were someone’s grandmother?” he wondered. “Why do I feel like you are reading your inaugural teleprompter manifesto for the first time? But more importantly, why grab the white knuckles by grabbing a clipboard with what appears to be a stack of empty file folders? ”
Jon Lovett, a former White House director, wrote some of the best jokes at Barack Obama’s White House correspondent dinner and delivers his own version of a night-style monologue on his podcast each week. Lovett or Leave It, found some humor in Gutfeld’s claim to do something “different” than any other early-stage Fox show.
“I love a monologue about being brave enough to take on the canceling culture. 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. “It simply came to our notice then. Fox News is evil. But for good measure, he added, “I approve of all Woody Allen jokes.”
Anthony Atamanuik, de The Show Show fame, was similarly baffled by the anti-corporatist divergence that occupied the second half of Gutfeld’s monologue. “It was a confusing fight that contained five-year reference jokes woven into a toothless serpentine‘ positioning ’against social media and businesses that ended in a powerless fumble with no sense of its importance,” he said.
Others were less willing to give Gutfeld the time of day. The comment has been reached, first Night show host Larry Wilmore responded with two words: “No, thank you.”
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