'Lopez Tonight,'
George being George
TBS show bubbles along on the energy of its host
By Tom Conroy
Nov 10, 2009
Enthusiasm can get you very far in show business. George Lopez, his celebrity guests and his audience all seemed extremely pleased to be on the premiere of his new talk show, “Lopez Tonight,” and their enjoyment proved to be surprisingly contagious.
That doesn’t mean that Lopez’s monologue was particularly witty, or that the comedy bits were particularly funny, or that the interviews were particularly revealing.
But if Lopez can sustain the energy level, his show, which airs Monday to Thursday on TBS at 11 p.m., should be a reliable pick-me-up for viewers looking for a mainstream alternative to the quirky, self-referential comedy of David Letterman and Conan O’Brien and their often awkward interactions with their guests.
Paradoxically, although Lopez constantly reminded his audience that he is a Latino and presented his hosting a talk show as a cultural breakthrough, the hour generally felt safer and more familiar than the Caucasian-hosted talk shows on NBC and CBS.
Lopez’s opening monologue promised something different: “The revolution begins right now,” he declared. “The revolution begins in English y también en español.”
He then said that the variety of races and age groups in the audience represented “everybody together for the common bond, which is making late night different and bringing change to late night TV.”
Even the people who were there in the studio, swept up in the moment, probably thought of other priorities.
For a premiere night, the rest of the monologue was surprisingly hit-or-miss, with too many topics in search of punch lines. But unlike Dave and Conan, who have continued Johnny Carson’s tradition of trying to milk laughs from the failure to get a laugh, Lopez powered through the lulls.
Some of the jokes played with ethnic stereotypes, but Lopez, being a minority himself, can get away with that.
In a comedy segment, two audience members were asked politically incorrect questions about people of various ethnicities they saw on video. (The least offensive question was probably whether the Latino man steals cable.) The bit provoked genuine, if nervous, laughter, but if a white talk-show host tried to present this segment, the next day he would be calling to see if he could book himself on “Oprah” to apologize.
Lopez’s celebrity guests all made sure to say that they understood the historic nature of the premiere. Ellen DeGeneres made a brief, unbilled and generally unfunny appearance in which she pretended to give Lopez his mail. Getting serious, she said, “Everybody needs to be represented on television.”
Eva Longoria Parker told Lopez that she nearly wept during his monologue, adding, “I’m so proud of you.” And Kobe Bryant, who said he generally avoids talk shows, said, “For you, and what this moment is, it’s an honor to be here.”
Lopez returned the favor by stressing how thrilled he was that his guests—who also included the guitarist Carlos Santana—were there. But he didn’t draw any particularly amusing or interesting anecdotes out of them. A prepared bit in which he tried to make Longoria fulfill her promise to dance on a stripper pole if the show got picked up was mercifully brief.
As the hour went on, “Lopez Tonight” became more and more reminiscent of Arsenio Hall’s early ’90s syndicated talk show, which similarly featured an energetic minority-member host who frequently pointed out all the boundary-shattering that was going on when mostly what was happening was very traditional showbiz glad-handing.
Hall made that formula work for five years, but he eventually surrendered to a stronger mainstream competitor, Jay Leno’s “Tonight Show.” Now that Leno is out of the way, Lopez could become the host who succeeds with audiences by making celebrities comfortable and happy.
He probably doesn’t need to keep pretending he’s doing something new.
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