[FIPS Was There...] Running Late with Scott Rogowsky

Comedy is tough. I mean...I've been unsuccessfully attempting it on & off here in this space for over five years now.

Late night TV is tough. These days, late night TV is a rapidly-shifting area with six-to-ten hilarious white males competing for dominance over the landscape. Yeah yeah yeah...I know that Arsenio is back. C'mon now though...nobody's really noticed.

In the past year, we've seen Jimmy Fallon replace Jay Leno. Seth Meyers slid into Jimmy Fallon's spot. David Letterman announced his retirement. Stephen Colbert leapt from Comedy Central to claim his chair. Just yesterday, Craig Ferguson announced his imminent departure from the Late Late Show. Who will replace him? It most definitely won't be Chelsea Handler, who recently left her late night show on E! & is now heading to Netflix. Maybe Ferguson's replacement will be a woman. Maybe said woman will be black. As such, the A.V. Club ran a speculative article complete with Aisha Tyler's photo.

It is in this atmosphere that the universe gets Running Late, a talk show of sorts that New York Magazine described as "the comedy talk show for the internet age." I don't know what the fuck that means but it is its own brand of talk show. Hosted by Scott Rogowsky, a bearded, suited dude from Westchester, Running Late plays pretty regularly at Littlefield, where I got to see it for the first time this past Wednesday. The occasion for me getting my lazy ass out to see it?...an evening featuring both a reunion of Conan writers and an appearance from W. Kamau Bell.

Running Late has all the typical talk show characteristics--a band, a sidekick, a desk, an opening monologue, the word "late" in the title. The band is three dudes who play junk like Franz Ferdinand tunes & President of the United States of America's "Lump." The sidekick is Scott's dad (@sidekickmarty). He's largely silent but did help out with a joke about "gymboree."

The show opened with a video of Godowsky (sponsored by ecards) interviewing people post-workout in the same manner as a post-game sports reporter. After a monologue where the speaker buzzed behind him, he joked about dodging creditors as exercise & basically closed with the words "admittedly that wasn't the best closer for a monologue." From there, he took a seat at his late night desk & was quickly interrupted by Brian McCann, a seventeen-year writer for Conan O'Brien, coming on stage & threatening the host with a squirt gun. McCann was quickly confronted by Andy Blitz, who was nominated for a bunch of Emmys for his work on Conan, and was wielding a bigger, realer looking gun. There was some talk about splicing jellyfish & piranha DNA with human DNA & Jon Glaser, a former Conan writer who's lately known as Laird on HBO's Girls, walked on stage eating a sandwich. That seemed to defuse things.

After a segment about "future obituaries," Rogowsky introduced a segment about stalking people on Facebook. The guest was Meika Hollender, a gal he has eleven mutual Facebook friends with, who co-founded a company called "Sustain Condoms" with her father. Their talk was part shill & part sex talk & part daughter-dad condom company creepy. It went on for way longer than I cared for.

Next up was Alexis Ohanian, one of the co-founders of Reddit. I'm quickly approaching 40 and, as such, am both frustrated by the layout of Reddit & intrigued by the idea of Reddit users acting as a crime-solving community. I went in with a negative-but-curious attitude. Godowsky & Ohanian went back and forth about the power of Reddit. Ohanian said some bullshit about how, in the end, the internet is still "just people" & that "the problem is not with the platform. It's with the people." They discussed Reddit’s recent battles with banning child porn. There was an "upvote" joke & talk of the NSA. It went on for way longer than I cared for.

The main event of the night was the panel of former Conan writers--McCann, Blitz & Glaser. It was also the first time that the night felt relaxed & not like a plug for something. As it turns out, Andy Blitz got his job at Conan by telling someone "I’ll smoke you up if you get me a job at Conan." Jon Glaser regretted not getting his famous Conan sketch "Pubes Meets Turd" set in Hawaii so he could take advantage of the travel. We learned that Conan announcer Joel Godard was down for pretty much anything, which explains a lot. They spoke about the evolution of late night talk shows. It went on for a long time, but it was okay because the group on stage kept it engaging & funny.

Comedian W. Kamau Bell closed the show with a short standup set before sitting down with Rogowsky for a brief chat. Bell's risen into the limelight recently, with his series Totally Biased expanding to five nights a week & becoming the flagship show for FX’s new network, FXX, before they decided to abruptly cancel it. Along the way, he got to ride the elevators at NBC, where he was often confused with ?uestlove & Cornell West. As is his style, he had a lot to say on the topic of race. His show's abrupt cancellation could be looked at as an African-American folk tale, ala the end of the short-lived Frank's Place. For him, Brooklyn is a place where, as a black guy, he'll often go to a black neighborhood, look around & think to himself "Huh." His segment didn't go on for a long time, which was good because, by this point, we were about two hours into the night & I have a short-attention span problem.

...& this mashup of skits & interviews & absurdity used by Running Late & brought on by late night hosts such as Conan O'Brien is the current state of late night talk shows. As it is, anybody can have a late night show. TOTALLY DIY, MAN. Whether said show is worth paying attention to for an entire episode is the real question.

Read way more from Shawn at eatdrinksnack.com and eatdrinktaco.com.