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Posted on Wed, Nov. 11, 2009 10:15 PM
Nuevo late night: Lopez speaks Spanish, but it's Sykes who's caliente
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When George Lopez this week declared, “The revolution begins right now!” he was not standing in the parking lot of an abandoned factory or at the steps of AIG or in front of a thousand angry tea party protesters.
He was standing, rather, on a multi-million-dollar set that Warner Bros. had just for him and his new talk show, “Lopez Tonight,” which airs at 10 p.m. weeknights on TBS.
The “revolution” that the onetime sitcom star was referring to was the fact that a Latino was hosting a late-night talk show marketed to a culturally diverse audience. The operative word there is “marketed.” At regular occasions during the first “Lopez Tonight,” I had the unsettling feeling of being sold to, of watching “paid programming,” a feeling that was usually followed by reaching for my remote.
Alas, I was on the hook for the duration. And so was Lopez, in the sense that his show never went off-the-hook. Part of this was first-night jitters and a desire to cram so much salesmanship into the first hour. If ratings follow their historic course, Monday was the only opportunity for “Lopez Tonight” to make its appeal to many of those tuning in — citizens who, like me, vote with their clickers.
“As I stand here before you, I see what America looks like,” Lopez declared, sounding less like a comedian with a reputation as a Mexican Don Rickles and more like President Barack Obama. In the buildup to the blessed event, Lopez made copious references to his 18 appearances on the old Arsenio Hall show. It’s clear that TBS, which is rolling the dice by investing in a nightly talk show (as opposed to, say, “Friends” reruns), wants to capture both the young, diverse audience and the party atmosphere that made “Arsenio” a nationwide phenomenon during its heyday from 1989 to 1993.
The show’s 11-minute opening bit was spent telling ethnic jokes of the variety that Lopez could’ve developed weeks ago. The only time “Lopez Tonight” felt like it might on a normal night was when two audience members were enlisted in a game of guessing how different nationalities would respond to questions like, “Have you ever been in jail?” or “Have you ever used the N-word?”
Mostly, though, it was hard to get a gauge on whether “Lopez Tonight,” like its slimmed-down host, was fit to go the long haul. I’m sure Lopez’s good friend Arsenio Hall would be happy to tell him, however, that late-night hosts don’t have time for revolution. They barely have time to do an entertaining show, and on Monday, Lopez didn’t even have that.
“The Wanda Sykes Show,” TV’s other new late-night entry, may start an insurrection … among viewers who stayed on for its debut after Saturday’s late news and were steaming mad by what they saw. Sykes, best known from her “Old Christine” role, was not known as a political comic until last May, when she said in front of the president and the White House correspondents supper that she hoped Rush Limbaugh’s kidneys failed.
The joke was a reference to Rush’s infamous wish that the new administration failed, but it sounded like those in the room didn’t appreciate it.
Those people should probably skip “The Wanda Sykes Show.” For me, Sykes’ combination of political outrage and outrageous comedy had a certain jaw-dropping appeal to it. The former was on full display in her monologue, when she came to the sitting president’s defense.
Posted on Wed, Nov. 11, 2009 10:15 PM
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