I watch The Daily Show. I like it. It’s funny. Even when he’s landing blows on the rest of the media and their collective idiocy, Jon still manages to be clever and memorable, and for the most part his correspondents are too. But, sadly, not all.
I watched Olivia Munn’s first appearance on the show when she reported on the oil spill in the Gulf. At the time, I was impressed by how wooden, stilted, and lifeless her segment and performance were. Being a generous fellow though, I chalked it up to her getting her sea legs and waited to pass judgment on her until I’d seen more. Yes, her first performance was terrible, but perhaps she just hadn’t found her voice yet.
A month or so later, I’m still waiting, and after seeing her bit on the Arizona immigration debacle (interpret that as you wish), I have to say I am not happy. Or amused. It still feels as though her segments are scripted by the show’s writers, and they lack that personal touch that all of the really good correspondents- and great comedians in general- have. What’s stopping me from giving her more time? Well, she’s been on the show plenty of times, and has yet to improve. The kiddie gloves need to come off at some point, but I’m afraid this is it. Olivia, you just don’t have what it takes. What makes the correspondents’ segments enjoyable (and in some cases actually watchable) is how differently they each tackle their segments. Putting John Oliver on a story will produce a very different sketch from what you might see if Larry Wilmore had handled it instead (just to name two excellent members of the show’s reporters). Like I said, comedy is personal at its heart- it’s about you and the person telling the joke. What distinguishes passable comedy from great comedy is that personal finish- when Robin Williams cracks wise about the appropriateness of Bernard Madoff’s last name, it’s done in a manner completely different from how Lewis Black presents it. But it’s more than just that. It’s not just important to build a brand for the sake of being funnier than normal, it’s important to build a brand just to stand out at all. Right now Munn is still playing the straight man (or woman, whatever) in her segments. That’s not what she’s supposed to be doing.
Bottom line? She doesn’t have the talent. So what is she doing there?
Clearly, the higher-ups at The Daily Show know fairly well what they’re doing (being funny), and they’re damn good at it- just look at all the emmys the show has racked up. Look at the kind of people they’ve had as correspondents: Ed Helms, Steve Carell, Stephen Colbert- even recent stars like John Hodgman and Aasif Mandvi . They even have Lewis Black make regular, hysterical, appearances. Lewis Black, for fuck’s sake! So who the hell was smacked in the head with a shovel over the weekend, walked into the studio on Monday, and said, “hey, we should hire that woman from G4!”? I hate to resort to cliché, but I hate tiptoeing around the real problem even more, so I’m just going to put it out there: they hired her for eye candy. I’ll admit it, she’s very good looking. I could sit there and watch her all day- provided she’s doing that in a forum where personal appearance is the main event (I’m not saying it should be the Playboy channel or something- maybe she could anchor a news station).
What especially rankles is how she (Munn) stacks up compared to Kristen Schaal. I can count the number of times Kristen did a segment on the show with one hand, and you know what’s a shame? She was fucking genius. Anybody who says women can’t be funny has never watched her (or Kathleen Madigan, for that matter). She was hired for her wit, plain and simple. And she didn’t make her appearance an issue! She’s hardly unattractive, but she didn’t put on any bells and whistles. She was plain, and that’s that- because what she looked like didn’t fucking matter. And now she’s gone. She isn’t even included among the news team on the goddamn website. And now we have Olivia Munn, who has a tenth of Kristen’s talent and ten times the cleavage, and you have to wonder if there isn’t a connection. She was hired to boost the ratings, plain and simple. Everybody knows sex sells. Samantha Bee, true to form, pointed this out the first time Olivia was on the show. And she’s absolutely right: Olivia is there to put the proverbial asses in seats (I highly doubt that’s actually a proverb, but what the fuck. Poetic license). Nothing more. Right, Olivia Munn was hired for her comedic talent, and Megan Fox is hired for anything because of her acting chops. Got it.
But why does this bother me so much? It’s pretty simple. If I want to see something funny, I watch a comedy show. If I want to see titties, I watch porn.
