The unblackening is gone and I’m going to miss most of it but not all of it

Phil Gurnee ♦ August 21, 2016 ♦ 1 Comment

Man, I loved that opening.  It was so awesome. I don’t pay much attention to rating so it came as a surprise to me that The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore  was canceled this week. I didn’t watch every night, and probably missed his first 12 months because once Jon Stewart and Colbert left I took off from the Comedy Channel for a while.

The one time I saw the show Larry was poking at Bill Cosby and while I understand why he did it, it didn’t make me laugh, it made me sad, because Bill Cosby had made my family laugh for almost 50 years, and I had this deep respect for the man. So finding out he was a complete asshole was just depressing, and while I hope he gets what is coming to him, I wasn’t interesting in being reminded what an asshole he was. I know I’ll never be able to listen to a Bill Cosby routine, or watch a show with him ever again. And yeah, that makes me sad.

I don’t remember what brought me back to watch the Daily Show with Trevor Noah but it might have been the election coverage. Anyway, it was natural to watch the Nightly show right after it.

I like Larry, I liked the show, I liked his correspondents but the panel part at the end of the show didn’t work for me. I hate to use the word “resonate” because that is the excuse that Comedy Central gave for giving Larry the heave-ho but it is exactly how I felt about the panel discussion.  Luckily it was at the end and time for bed anyway so I’d shut the show down just before the panel started. I figured I got at least 20 good minutes of thoughtful entertainment so I felt I was winning.  Maybe that was the part of the show that others like, to each their own.

With Wilmore’s departure from the late night ranks, the already overwhelmingly white-and-male world of late night is, well, even whiter.

Wilmore had been referring to this year’s election as “The Unblackening.” As he said in a statement about his show’s cancellation, he is “also saddened and surprised we won’t be covering this crazy election or ‘The Unblackening’ as we’ve coined it. And keeping it 100, I guess I hadn’t counted on ‘The Unblackening’ happening to my time slot as well.”

It is weird that the man who came up with the unblackening slogan was part of the unblackening of the Comedy Channel.  When I started writing this I didn’t know about the rating but after reading about them it does seem strange that Larry was sacked. The whole he “wasn’t resonating” sounds like they did some focus group bullshit. Too bad, he was his own man, and he and his people took some chances. Trevor Noah might have a better show if he the same correspondents working for him that Larry had. Hopefully, he’ll snag a couple.

And I hope Larry Wilmore gets another gig, he’s got some talent.