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\n Photo: Charles Sykes\/Bravo via Getty Images\n <\/p>\n
It\u2019s rare that I discuss the late-night episode as a discrete unit. Late night is basically YouTube now, and mostly only old heads (and people watching TV in hotels) experience segments in context\/conversation with each other. But Monday\u2019s Daily Show really had something going for it as a cohesive chunk of TV. Something about Jon Stewart\u2019s weekly rant going into a rare guest spot from Emmy-nominated<\/a> Jessica Williams to an earnest discussion of how to be Jewish while opposing the Netanyahu regime in Israel with Peter Beinart<\/a> layered together like a beautiful tiramisu.<\/p>\n Stewart\u2019s comedic persona of Old White Blowhard Doing His Best informed the discussion with Beinart, where both men expressed an honest \u2014 dare I say, brave? \u2014 vulnerability about not having all the answers yet while needing to speak out about the atrocities they are seeing out of Gaza. Stewart already positioned himself as fallible, which made his earnestness more endearing. It\u2019s like when Polonius dies in Hamlet. The dumb makes it more sad. So that was the best episode of late night this week. But below, the best moments:<\/p>\n Desi Lydic is a really charming interviewer for entertainment bits. She was great with Alison Brie and Dave Franco on Wednesday<\/a>, but a day before her chemistry with Jenny Slate was on fire. Slate and Lydic talked about Dying for Sex in a way that makes it seem like not the tear-jerkiest tear-jerker to ever jerk tears, and that is a triumph in itself. But then when Slate got to list her very esoteric bucket list, the segment soared.<\/p>\n Earlier in the week<\/a>, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang pitched a podcast for Stephen Colbert and his wife, Evie, to do once The Late Show is dunzo: They go on dates and rate the experience. I\u2019d listen! And this mail-bag seg proved the two remember everything about their early dating life. Love, love, love hearing details like the first movie they ever saw together was Backdraft. The kind of detail entire improv scenes are built on. The easy chemistry between Colbert and McGee should be a podcast, a parasocial tincture the Colbert nation can slurp weekly.<\/p>\n Comedian Drew Dunn is really innovating in the zone of robo-voice imitation. I\u2019ve never heard a Siri-adjacent voice impression so accurate. I think it\u2019s because he speaks on the inhale? It sounded so non-carbon-based I thought for a second that he was lip-syncing. Late night is still the place where burgeoning comedians can find a new audience, and we need to keep that space available.<\/p>\n I feel like I say it a lot, but I need to say it even more: Seth Meyers is the best banterer on late night. Meyers does something the other girlies either can\u2019t or won\u2019t \u2014 match his guest\u2019s freak. He\u2019s \u201cYes, and\u201d-ing like a true improviser. If a guest is taciturn, he draws them out. If they\u2019re a friend, he\u2019ll welcome the audience into a preestablished circle of trust. And with this Sandra Oh spot, he plays a wonderfully Shakespearian fool (callback to the intro) to Oh\u2019s knowing actor. First he asks Oh what the hardest speech she\u2019s ever memorized is. Then after she acquits herself beautifully, he says the speech back to her in a way I can only describe as \u201cdog-shittily.\u201d Then he asks her what it meant in the first place. It\u2019s the essence of chat comedy.<\/p>\n And then you have the pure chaos of WWHL, where the L (Live) is doing a lot of heavy lifting. Wednesday\u2019s show saw Isaac Mizrahi and RHOM\u2019s Julia Lemigova discuss their brushes (and snogs) with accused sexual predator Kevin Spacey<\/a>. \u201cI was so young, Andy,\u201d Mizrahi says. \u201cBut I looked younger.\u201d They also discussed who has or hasn\u2019t kissed host Andy Cohen. It had all the energy of a dinner party, where people want to get involved with the topic of convo regardless of whether or not it\u2019ll look good in the harsh light of day. Everyone has an anecdote, and everyone will be heard. This is one of those late-night moments you could easily see staged in a movie, in order to show how the character\u2019s life has gone completely out of control. Or clipped out in a true-crime doc. Either way, you\u2019re watching.<\/p>\n