Why do political comedy shows like The Daily Show still exist?
For over fifteen years we've been watching what's essentially a more hard-hitting, souped up Weekend Update, with carefully curated clips of increasingly wacky cable news shenanigans, teed up for satisfying jokes and bits mocking the increasingly illegitimate nature of "news" on TV.share
Back then, the idea that we were shifting from a society that watched nightly news, to one that consumed a 24-hour news cycle made up almost entirely of editorialized punditry was profound and shocking. That, combined with the radical changes in government and culture we saw after 9/11, desperately needed to be discussed. The Daily Show was the perfect vehicle for addressing these changes, and they deservedly earned accolades and Emmys. It also paved the way for more shows in this vein, giving rise to the Colbert Report, a slight twist on the original format with a performer and character in Steven Colbert that took the satire of the style to a new height. Nevertheless, the core issues being discussed couldn't help but become stale.
When Obama took office, much of the fire that drove the Daily Show et. al. dissipated. There was still much to criticize, but the criticism didn't have teeth. It didn't need them as much. There was a bit of a return to normalcy in the political sphere, at least in outward appearance, and punditry had become old hat. Everyone was doing it by then, and the righteous indignation had fizzled out. What we were left with was bland and ineffectual; a shadow of its former self. Yet, somehow, the show went on.
Incredibly, even more shows based on this waning format went on the air, with Larry Wilmore's Nightly Show, and a first foray for TBS with Full Frontal with Samantha Bee. From the onset these shows struggled to find a new take on a style that had been driven into the ground for years. I'm a fan of both of these people, but much like the Daily Show with Trevor Noah, I just couldn't connect with something so worn-out as criticizing politicians and the news cycle with an ever-decreasing vocabulary of jokes that are essentially nothing but lazy wordplay at this point. No more remotes pretending to be someone else, no more characters to lampoon the wackier TV demagogues, just clip-one liner-clip-short diatribe-repeat ad nauseam.