Normally this blog will be about sports or food but I've decided to use this entry to talk about something a little different. On Friday night, the end of one of the funniest late night talk shows will come about, as Craig Ferguson will be leaving the Late Late Show. Some of you may ask, “You mean that guy that played Drew Carey’s boss?” and if that is all you know of Craig Ferguson, you have missed out on ten great years of late night humor.
When he first took over the show from Craig Kilborn, I was like many people and asked, “Did they not want to pay to change the whole sign and found the first guy named Craig they could get?” When I made that assumption I didn’t realize how wrong that I was and maybe, just maybe, CBS really did know what they were doing. I at the time was a big fan of Conan O’Brien’s show and didn’t pay “that other show” much attention as I thought it was just some crazy six month experiment with the Scottish guy from The Drew Carey Show. When Conan left Late Night, I decided that I was finally going to give that Scottish guys’ show a chance, and I rank that as one of the top decisions I ever made when it comes to television. The first few shows that I watched I didn’t quite focus on what I was watching, as many times I was up late studying, doing homework, or just getting in from wherever I had been that night. The more I turned the show on though, the more I noticed how funny that the show really was. It was not like a lot of shows where you could tell writers were working tirelessly to write jokes (which I know they have many talented writers on the show) but it was more like a friend of yours on television telling you this new funny joke he had heard. He brought about a new way of doing late night talk shows. For many years it had become the same old comedy routine, with host and sidekick until Craig changed the whole dynamic. While the show was already funny with Craig himself, when he added his sidekick Geoff Peterson, the show went to another level of hilarity. If you don’t know Geoff, he is Craig’s gay robot skeleton sidekick. If you have never watched the show, you are probably asking yourself, “What are you talking about?!?!” When Geoff first came on the show, he was just a robot that was built because Craig wanted a skeleton sidekick after watching the movie “Ghost Rider” and all Geoff could say was ‘Ha ha ha, you’re the best Craig’. After that he developed into a regular part of the show and became a key addition to the show. It was something different, it was a new approach to the way late night talk was done. Whether it was the dialog between Geoff and Craig or Geoff’s standoff between him and Kristen Bell, the addition of the robot skeleton sidekick was genius by the man himself Craig Ferguson. Craig truly seemed to be of the mindset, “I’m going to make myself laugh and if I can do that hopefully I can make others laugh too.” It is a mindset that has worked and worked well for the last ten years. While the humor was the key to the show, Craig also was known for really being able to talk us through serious events that happened in life. Whether it was talking about the loss of his parents, speaking about his bouts with alcoholism, the shootings in Colorado, or the bombings in Boston, Craig always seemed to know how we were all feeling. When tragedies would strike, instead of the normal comedic openings he would have a serious discussion and then break into more of the comedy later to try and get our minds away for a while. Craig Ferguson in a time of reality television, lots of times seemed to be the only real person on television. For a while, I thought I was the only person around my area that was up late enough to be watching the Late Late Show but I found out very quickly that I wasn’t. I found that many of my friends had discovered the humor accidentally like myself but were now hooked on watching the show. Some were like myself and found it while staying up late studying, while others discovered it while sitting up with their newborn children in the middle of the night. While we may have all found the show in different ways, the one common thread was that we were all hooked on the humor. While others may have not known, we all knew why it was funny to hear the doorbell ring and yell, “Who’s that at the door?!?!” or why ringing a bell three times means we must all start speaking in a German accent. It’s that humor and connection with his audience that has made the Late Late Show so beloved in the hearts of its viewers. Whether it was through humor or the occasional serious moment, Craig Ferguson knew how to make late night television his own. As the curtain for the final show falls on Friday, the humor will stay with us and keep us laughing for many years to come. What did we learn on the show tonight Craig? We have learned that the last ten years of late night television has been some of the funniest years of our lives and we have you to thank for that Craig.
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JamesBoiling Springs native, lover of sports and food. 15x SC Press Association Award Winner. I do some sports writing and radio every now and then. Archives
April 2020
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