Last Night was the first “non-pilot” episode of the ½ Hour News Hour. Overall, the show had some solid moments, a weak segment or two, but ultimately was a fairly solid ½ hour of laughs.
The show started off with an ad that was making fun of your traditional motor sport / monster truck rally (“Sunday! Sunday! Sunday!”) that was pitting the Rutgers Women’s Basketball team v. the Duke Men’s Lacrosse team. Let’s just say, the show started off slow.
The next segment was the first of 2 “quick hit” news segments. The closet comparison for these would be Saturday Night Live’s “Weekend Update” segments. Just some quick highlights from the two segments:
- “Part of the reason Al Gore’s house electric bill seems so high, is that people don’t understand how much power it takes to recharge him.
- “Upon hearing about the potential attacks on our soldiers at Fort Dix, Harry Reid demanded an immediate withdrawal of all troops from Fort Dix”
- “George Tenet stated that no one regretted his decision to state Iraq had nuclear weapons more than he did….well, maybe one person did [cut to picture of Sadam]”
- “People say Fred Thompson’s portrayal of a racist in a movie 20 years ago might hurt him in a presidential race…especially in “unable to tell TV from reality” demographic”
There were 2 other commercial segments: (1) A commercial making fun of the ACLU and the ACLU’s support for child molesters living near schools, (2) a commercial for Oxy-Clinton, a drug that counter acts the various negative attributes of Mrs. Bill Clinton’s presence. Commercial (2) was highlighted by an appearance by Laura Ingraham as the doctor presenting the drug. Laura, looking absolutely gorgeous in her lab coat, proceeded to list some of the side effects of taking Oxy-Clinton:
- High Taxes
- Massive Unemployment
- Riots
- Chaos
- Total Breakdown of the American Healthcare System
Overall, commercial (2) was in the running for the best segment of the show.
The news / special report segments went 1 for 3, an acceptable batting average in baseball, but leaving room for improvement as far as the show goes. Starting first with the low point, a segment dealing with a pregnant lawyer who ultimately “gave birth” to twins during the segment. There’s not much to say beyond this segment being a train wreck. A segment asking the question “How can we blame the Kansas Tornado on President Bush?” was fairly solid, with responses such as “His lack of attention to global warming” and “having all our national guard equipment in Iraq.” The best special report segment, which aired the earliest of the three, dealt with sexual harassment in the work place, and featured a sexy “reporter-ette” demonstrating female on male harassment to the male co-host. The skit reached its pinnacle when the male host rolled his chair back and asked “What about Female on Female Harassment? How would that work?” I strongly suggest hitting up youtube to view this segment.
The final segment was some Dennis Miller stand up. I paused to write down some of his jokes, but a number of them I had heard in his specials before. Basically, if you’ve ever seen Dennis Miller on anything, you know what to expect.
The ½ Hour News Hour got off to a good start with its first “non-pilot” issue. Though it had some rough spots, it gave a number of solid laughs over its 30 minutes. After years of being the butt of jokes from the liberal media, it’s good to see that conservatives can dish it out too. In fact, like on most things, The !/2 Hour News Hour shows how conservatives can do more than just hold their own with liberals, conservatives can out perform them.
