So today I was watching Katie Nolan Garbage Time and it hit me: I realized this is Talk Soup in another form. People have been ripping this show off for years. Jon Stewart I'm talking to you.
I thought Greg Kennear did a tremendous job on that show, but then Jon Henson took over it went to a whole new level. I was ticked when our cable system dropped the E channel about two years later. Saw Jon at the NAB convention in Vegas - real nice guy.
Talk Soup was about entertainment and celebrities, The Daily show is about news. Sure, you don't like Jon Stewart because he and his Harvard writers skewer the politics of stupid. Talk Soup was best with Greg Kinnear.
Y'all are killing me, the best iteration of this show was when it was just called "The Soup" and hosted by Joel McHale. My wife and I watched it until it went off the air.
Best What thread ever? Completely agree minus the Jon Stewart part- that has zero in common. Loved Talk Soup and Henson. Everything else has been a poor imitation-looking at you Joel McHale(The Soup) and Katie Nolan(Garbage Time). Also it reminds me of a great time for the E network. Wild On was still airing...Jules Asner and then Brooke Burke! Wooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
Jon Stewart has been working for as long as all of those guys, lineal successor to Joan Rivers after he replaced Hall. They were all "ripping off" Norm MacDonald, David Spade and most notably Dennis Miller who revitalized/perfected Weekend Update in the late '80s.
Sorry, but the elitism around some praising the Daily Show and Stewart is a little exasperating, especially the "true successor" and "disembowel Trevor Noah" crowd. This thing started very similarly to Talk Soup and gradually shifted to political commentary, Jon Stewart shifted along with it.
Sorry, Joel McHale was great. Granted he had better timing as daytime and non-broadcast television got crazier and more voluminous, and his writers had some decent recurring bits. Obviously giving him separate credit due to Community, but his character and even some of that show's conceit was indirectly shaped by his work on Soup.
Yeah, there's shows with that format all over cable, like tosh.o or some of those reality tv show recaps. John Oliver's format reminds me of a b*stard child mix of talk soup + those imaginative family guy segues that sometimes prove a point.
