Larger Editorial: In the Audience For The Colbert Report

Tonight, I talk about what it’s like to be in the audience for The Colbert Report just like I did for The Anderson Cooper Show and The Daily Show just to complete this unofficial name dropping trilogy. Surprising probably no one, The Colbert Report audience experience is virtually identical to The Daily Show (I recommend going back to read that article) but…I thought I’d share a few quick observations anyway.

5. . As with any show I’ve ever been to, get ready to wait: First you’ll be escorted into a dank alleyway right beside the studio (a.k.a a cattle roundup) to wait for an hour. Then you’ll be asked for I.D., given a ticket, walk ten feet into a room where they take the ticket away (a holding cell) and wait for another hour standing up. Then you’ll go into the studio itself and listen to blasting rock music (not unlike they’re trying to drive out domestic terrorists at Waco) to get our “energy level up” we also get warmed up by a comic not funny enough to be on or write for the show.

4. Watching the show at home might be more enjoyable: Unlike The Daily Show or Anderson Cooper experience, I actually got kind-of annoyed waiting for The Colbert Report to start. I know people will say “You’re so lucky to get to go to that. You are one ungrateful bastard to get to go to a free show, and get annoyed by waiting two hours standing up.” But seeing a show you like in the back row of a theater isn’t really a lot different than watching it at home. Is watching the sausage get made (almost exactly what you’re seeing at home and shockingly non-intimate) really worth standing shoulder to shoulder in a room no more charming than a drunk tank for an hour and letting a Jets hoodie wearing audience member scream non-stop into your ear while the show’s on so you actually miss most of the jokes?

3. Like The Daily Show, you get an “exclusive” Q&A session with Colbert before the show BUT…: The only thing you’re not getting at home that we get in the audience is a Q&A session with Colbert “out of character” where he supposedly answers the questions as the real Colbert would. However, it didn’t feel like he stepped out of his character at all and so you can more or less guess how he would answer stupid audience questions (as a general rule, the people that get their questions answered have no idea what to ask Colbert or Jon Stewart). The most out of character I saw Colbert the entire show was when he flubbed one of his lines–this happened three times–and they had to start a bit over, which felt great. It was a humanizing moment and the only part of the taping that didn’t make it to air unlike every other talk show I’ve been to that at least edits some footage, any footage, a single joke, something.

2. The audience is smaller than you think: So Colbert doesn’t spend a lot of time in his audience and the show doesn’t often pan out to it as a result. However, during the opening few seconds home viewers usually get a quick flash of the audience and it looks like an easy couple hundred people. In actuality, it’s no more than 120 people and those of us are kind-of sandwiched in there.

1. The show must go on…no matter what: During the show, something happened that I don’t even think most of the people in the audience saw. It was one of the members on the far right hand side being carried out by one of the show’s burly security guards while her frantic mother followed them out. Stealthily, two members of Colbert’s team went to the seats to sit down and fill them so as not to have empty seats on camera (unnecessary as the show never pans out to the audience but I admire the effort if not the insensitivity). No one stopped the taping, said a word about this/explained it to the audience, slowed the taping down, or even told Stephen this had happened (I really don’t think he even knew about it as the audience is hard to see from his desk when the lights are down). It felt a little brutal to be asked to clap like a trained seal while one of the audience patrons had to be carried out of the studio unconscious AND FOR NO OTHER AUDIENCE MEMBER TO HAVE A PROBLEM WITH THIS. Even the ones that clearly did see it didn’t seem fazed by it at all, and went right back to squealing like pigs at every joke a few seconds later.

P.S.–I realize Stephen Colbert is a hilarious and razor sharp man (he’ll always be a hero for his performance at the White House correspondence dinner), but I also realized watching the taping that just doing a liberal comedy show will work every time because conservatives will do the heavy lifting for you by saying stupid shit. The funniest part of tonight’s show were just clips from things Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity, Herman Cain, and the always foolhardy Rush Limbaugh actually said. With walking, breathing material like these clowns out there, the jokes write themselves.