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75It's got a way to go to become a polished program, but made a very solid and affable first impression.
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80"The Daily Show" spinoff has gotten off to an impressive start with a topnotch premiere followed by a respectable second outing that underscores just how challenging it will be to sustain this half-hour high-wire act four nights a week.
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60It's more an intellectual, in your head, "hey, that's clever," than a laugh-out-loud funny.
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80One of Colbert's strengths has always been wordplay, which is in full force on ''The Colbert Report" and gives the show an added level of wit.
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50Smart fun.... But Report often feels like an overlong, overindulged sketch.
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63Colbert was an invaluable part of the Daily Show, but as the whole show, he's not enough and too much simultaneously.
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50This would be hilarious, except that political talk TV has become such a parody of itself that watching them is more than enough comedy for anybody.
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80The biggest question hanging over "The Colbert Report" is whether the show’s sendup of the pomposity and fear-mongering of cable news blowhards will be as appealing in the long term as "The Daily Show’s" satire of public figures and the news media as a whole.
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75Unlike Daily anchorman Jon Stewart, he's not only ridiculing the headlines but mocking himself. This is closer to acting than comedy, and it may be tougher. But Stephen Colbert is a great American and deserves our support. And suppore. [7 Nov 2005, p.41]
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90Mr. Colbert's on-camera persona may not wear well over the long term, but for now at least "The Colbert Report" is a worthy spinoff, an icy-cold beer chaser to the shot of whiskey that is "The Daily Show."
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70The new show dovetails nicely with its lead-in to present a solid hour of skewered news and punctured pomposity.
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90Not only does Colbert maintain his persona without skipping a beat throughout the entire show, but he's got great comic timing, the show's writers are brilliant, and the whole thing is pure foolish, bizarre, idiotic fun at Bill O'Reilly's expense.
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50Monday’s premiere was one of the most nearly perfect half-hours of television I’ve ever seen.... [But] I can’t imagine tuning in “The Colbert Report” four nights a week just to watch a caricature.
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60A few kinks are painfully apparent. Foremost among them is the blowhard persona Colbert forces on us for half an hour. It feels like a weaker extension of "The Daily Show."
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90In the run-up to the show it all sounded a bit hard to get your head around, but in the flesh the show zinged, at least this first week.
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60Colbert is very skillful at parodying people who are already parodies of themselves, and his show is a lot sharper than most of what passes for comedy on TV. At the end of the day, though--a day, say, on which a President says something foolish, or a Supreme Court nominee has to step aside, or a White House aide is indicted--the voice you’ll most want to hear is still Jon Stewart’s.
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70By its very nature, the position Colbert occupies—the butt of his own show's joke—seems more difficult to sustain than Stewart's role as the eternal observer.
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75When it is clicking, The Colbert Report is Countdown on mescaline -- occasionally brilliant, occasionally loopy, definitely entertaining.
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Colbert proves that the line between serious TV journalism and utter nonsense is a very thin one indeed. [4 Nov 2005, p.67]
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It turns out that it's a lot easier to make fun of the news than to parody the people who deliver it.
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It’s an astute parody, but it suffocates the show, sealing The Colbert Report under a hermetic layer of irony.
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What worked so well in short Daily Show-sized bites wears thin over a half-hour program.
User score distribution:
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Positive: 82 out of 92
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Mixed: 3 out of 92
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Negative: 7 out of 92
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10
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DustinC10Absolutely fantastic show, the writing is great, as is the talent, you really can't deny the quality of the show.