Buy Or Don’t Buy

I don’t watch The Daily Show very often, not because I don’t like it but because I just don’t think about it very much.  But now that I’m settling into the life of an Unemployed Recent College Graduate, and now that it’s raining every single damn day, I find myself with little to do but think about things I stopped thinking about 4 years ago, ie TDS, learning how to bake and the first season of The OC.

So today I watched last night’s episode on Hulu, and was instantly struck by how much I disliked this guy:

His name is Josh Gad, and according to his Wikipedia page last night was actually his Daily Show debut.  Well, sorry, but it sucked.  First of all, the bit wasn’t funny…at all.  That’s mainly due to the poor writing.  But a good performer could have sold it…and Gad failed to do so.  

The problem with Josh Gad is that he’s too obvious.  The genius of TDS is (was?) the relative subtlety of its correspondents.  The good ones (Colbert, Carell, Helms, Corddry, Bee) were obviously doing satiric takes on the super straight-faced cable correspondent, but they never hammed it up.  Gad is just the opposite, punctuating every statement with annoying hand gestures and talking too loud.  As he gets further into the scene, he also seems too…happy, or something.  Like he’s not taking it seriously.  But the whole point of TDS correspondents is that they take even the most ridiculous concepts very seriously.

Hopefully he won’t be sticking around too long.  His Wikipedia page says that he’s been cast in an American-remake-of-a-British-sitcom called No Heroics, starring Freddie Prinze Jr., who is apparently still alive.  The show has about a 3% chance of not sucking, but if it limits Gad’s ability to muck up TDS any further, it’s served its purpose.