The Opposition with Jordan Klepper

I've only seen the first episode, and I feel like that's enough. It's not just that it had a rough start - The Colbert Report took a bit of time to get its sea legs - but that it feels like a misfire in every way.

The basic premise is that Jordan Klepper is playing an Alex Jones-style conspiracist. There are two issues that show up right away. First, it's awfully similar to the premise of the Colbert Report, which was Colbert as Bill O'Reilly, and second, Klepper is the wrong person to play the part.

Klepper, (who was good on the Daily Show) is simply not able to project the intense, insane incoherence of cynical paranoiacs like Jones and Tomi Lahren. Instead, he comes across as a smug frat boy. He would be well suited to play a slick troll like Milo Yiannopoulos, but he is unable to capture the essence of Jones the way Colbert caught the essence of O'Reilly. Instead, he seems like an "east coast liberal media elite" trying, and failing, to play a character.

The other problem is that the first episode just wasn't funny. It jumped here and there with no focus and felt like it wasn't sure what it wanted to be, and the various "reporters" did little shticky bits that felt like amateur theater.

Because of all this, I don't see much room for growth. Klepper is saddled with a concept he can't pull off. It seems unlikely he could just reverse course now, and I don't see him getting a handle on the character he presumably chose to play.

At the end of the episode, I simply thought what I thought when Trever Noah took over the Daily Show: Why not Jessica Williams? How does she not have a show? Did she get in a fight with a bigwig at Comedy Central? I just don't get it.