Spreading "The Word"

It's weird watching this buzz about The Colbert Report. On the one hand, it's totally deserved. I think his signature "The Word" segment has to be the most fun you can have writing for television these days. On the other hand, Newsweek devotes three online pages to the show without mentioning what I think is one of the most basic, and perhaps one of the more counterintuitive things about the program, and that is that it owes more to the original, Craig Kilborn-hosted Daily Show than the Jon Stewart version from which it was spawned.

This cuts to my distinction between Kilborn's and Stewart's styles, in that Kilborn was parody and Stewart was comedy. Kilborn was full of himself, ditto Colbert. Inteviewees seemed a little afraid of Kilborn's "5 questions," and Barbara Boxer looked downright panicked last night. Even when you consider that the opening music is a bit more guitar-heavy than the current Daily Show theme, keep in mind that the original version came from Bob Mould and not They Might Be Giants.

I'm not saying this is a bad thing. Far from it. There was something more cutting about Kilborn's parody approach that, despite it's charms, I still miss from Stewart. Colbert's got that in spades. And that's the word.