The Colbert Report launched tonight, and I'll give it a solid B-, with the full expectation that as it continues and they get the bugs out, it'll improve. Ways I'd do that: Change the look and the music of the show, especially in the opening segment, so that it looks and sounds like less of a "Daily Show" spinoff. I know that's what it is, but there's ways to de-emphasize the connection so that the show stands more on its own.
To be fair, they're walking a line, like any spinoff. You want the show to please the original audience, but you don't want it to be a slavish copy.
Stephen Colbert's sense of humor, out from under the Jon Stewart umbrella, seems to have a larger streak of pure silliness. This came to the fore in the second and third segments, first in an interview with Stone Phillps. This took place at a "Charlie Rose" style round table, the dignity of which didn't stop the two men from trying to "out award" each other.
Colbert to Phillips: Do you keep your Emmy next to your...Peabody?
In the third segment the two competed in an increasingly surreal "gravitas-off," reading first news copy and then tongue twisters (he thrusts his fists against the post...) with suitably somber sobriety.
Not that anyone from the show's likely to be reading this, but if they do stumble across it: If it was me, I'd cultivate that note of silliness, which is delightfully antic, and leave the satire to the parent program.
Not because Colbert can't do it, but because we already have Jon for that.
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