Behind The Desk 121: Amy and Dave Forever

Brandon Wetherbee is the host of the talk show You, Me, Them, Everybody. YMTE Live records tonight at the Wonderland Ballroom with Rick Taylor from We Fought The Big One, Haywood Turnipseed Jr, Adam Friedland, Andrew Bucket, Lies About, Ryan McLaughlin and Natalie McGill.

Last night on his long-runnng, still good telelvision show, David Letterman announced his retirement. At the age of 69 he’ll say goodbye to late night.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l5sVI_-LRCI

Today, millions of words will be written about the state of late night and the lack of women in late night and the lack of minorities in late night and what about Conan and what about Chelsea and the show hasn’t been funny in 10 years and the show was never funny and the show was the funniest show in late night history. This is not one of those think pieces (OK, it kinda is, but that comes towards the end).

Audiences will find exactly what they want to hear, at least on the Internet. It means that it’ll be damn near impossible for a late night host to ever have the same type of impact Letterman has. Think pieces will most likely not bring this up. Network is still more important than cable when it comes to money, but not influence. His goodbye and his successor will be the end of an era, regardless of replacement. Now and for the foreseeable future, live airings of network TV don’t really matter. Hell, a lot of people found out about Letterman’s retiring six hours before the airing thanks to Twitter. But there will be think pieces and that’s fine.

We’re going to have a year of think pieces, even after the 11:30 pm CBS replacement is announced. And more think pieces will come after that about why wasn’t it Conan or Chelsea or Craig Ferguson or Louis CK or Chris Rock. More about the glass ceilings and how the show was blah blah blah.

We’ve all watched the show. You know if you like it. I like it. It’s more my speed than Fallon and not that much different than Kimmel. I like broadcasters. Broadcasters aren’t song and dance men. They tend to be better at conversing with their guests. There has been no better host/guest conversing in the modern late night era than Amy Sedaris and David Letterman.

Amy and Dave, Dave and Amy are the couple that you wished were real. If you haven’t witnessed their onscreen chemistry, let’s take a tour.

They should be best friends! They should be life partners!

Leg touching! Complimenting each other on their looks! Jokes about having sex with each other!

They’re both peculiar people! Do you think they dated? I hope they dated! Do they have a love child? Is that the funniest child of all time? Note: call backs and dates. Long running jokes and what other late night guest visits every three months?

Genuine compliments before she came out. A note of time passed. Sharing knowledge that Amy’s tubes are untied. MAKE A KID, YOU TWO!

That clip is revealing because Letterman actually opens up about his job. He feels like a pimp for the motion picture industry. He thinks his work isn’t worth anything. And it’s funny.

Point is, I’m going to miss this interaction. There’s no one else that has this chemistry on network late night and it’ll be very difficult to replace it. Here’s their most recent appearance.

Same song, same delightful absurdity. This is what we need to recognize, the unplanned loveliness of two adults using their words to delight an audience. No songs, no games, no gimmicks. It’s impossible to bottle this and it should be mourned.

Here’s the part you probably want to talk about, who will replace him. The safe guess is Neal Patrick Harris. A viable option is Jim Parsons. I hope it goes to Craig Ferguson. There will be speculation about Louis CK, Chris Rock and Seinfeld but it won’t happen. It’d be neat if W Kamau Bell or Patton Oswalt got it. Friends will Tweet and post on Facebook about friends of mine like Joe McAdam, Cameron Esposito and Joe Kwazcala that host talk shows. I could write 1,000 words each on why Gary Shandling, John C Reilly, Joel McHale, Greg Proops, Donald Glover, Todd Glass, Amy Poehler and Andy Daly would be amazing, but it’s pointless. The person that takes over this time slot will be very talented (safe money is on NPH) and please some and disappoint more, but in all likelihood, they won’t have the chemistry Letterman has with Sedaris. So I’ll end with my favorite segment of their’s to date. Hopefully there will be many more.