The “Night of Too Many Stars” Travesty

After weeks of seeing promotions, I watched Comedy Central’s “Night of Too Many Stars” last night, and was severely disappointed.

First, let me clearly state that this post is in no way meant to down, belittle, or otherwise offend people affected by Autism, or the need for people to fund Autism research, and education.

But even if you changed the beneficiaries to some other worthy cause, last night’s show was a mess. In an ideal world, we wouldn’t need such charity drives in the first place. Why is it that almost half of our tax dollars fund an atrocious war, wasting billions if not trillions of dollars, but that every noble cause needs to beg and scrape with fundraisers and bake sales and charity events?

Our education system is being systematically flushed down the toilet, even though a tiny scrape off of the top of the defense budget could solve so many problems. Why shouldn’t our tax dollars go toward making our country better, instead of merely defending the empire as it crumbles from within? Why shouldn’t the defense budget be supported mostly by charity events?

But let’s drop that idealism for a moment, and assume that in the “real world”, we are supposed to funnel half our lives’ blood to the war, and that everything else is supposed to raise money through charity. Furthermore, let’s assume that most people won’t donate out of the “goodness of their hearts”, but need themselves to be bribed into charity, by having benefit concerts, shows, and “with your gift of $X you’ll receive” rewards.

If we accept that people need to be bribed into giving, that people want to be paid (in entertainment or rewards) in order to donate, then we can only expect that people will then only donate if the entertainment is actually entertaining, or that the rewards are actually rewarding.

By that measure, “A Night of Too Many Stars” failed on both accounts.

Charity shows have a simple pattern: show something worth watching, break to ask for money, repeat. I mean, PBS has been doing it for decades.

So what went wrong last night? They asked for money, but they never really showed anything worth watching, and the overall effect was boring, amateur, and did not in any way live up to it’s name. Sure, there were “too many stars”, but they didn’t really do anything.

Most of their acts looked like they were winged on stage, were in no way related to the body of work of the star, or just weren’t funny. It’s a comedy network: if they’re trying to raise money, it should be with comedy. I’m not saying they weren’t funny in a “I don’t appreciate their humor” kind of way, but more like, “Is it their first time on stage?” kind of way. Their problem wasn’t material, but execution.

One of the biggest complaints that I’ve read has been against Sarah Silverman’s performance. Sure it was vulgar, but that’s her thing, she does vulgar comedy. I think that her bit was probably one of the best on the show, not because it was funny (I in fact, don’t appreciate her humor at all) but because she was doing a professional comedy routine that she had planned out and practiced long in advance.

The same could be said of Will Ferrell’s performance, not that it was especially funny either, but it was professionally executed. The material wasn’t particularly new (Bush bashing), but it was funny enough and well executed enough to be entertaining.

Rosie admitted that she hadn’t done her act in years, so my question is: Then why didn’t you practice? Why didn’t you generate new material? Her act bored me to tears, and it seems the audience wasn’t too impressed either.

In fact, I think that the only part of the show that was both entertaining, original, and well executed comedy was the Chris Rock and Steve Wright bit. Too very different, well known comedians, with different career peaks, doing each other’s jokes was a great idea and well done. Even if the jokes were bad, they were entertaining because of the dichotomy of the two.

And it’s not as if there haven’t been well executed comedy charity events in the past. Comics Come Home anyone?

Another complaint from last night were the premiums or rewards for donating. For $50 you got an oven mitt, for $100 a ski mask. I think that it was a great idea and that most people missed the point: they were essentially making fun of the idea that people need rewards in order to donate.

It was a poorly executed tongue-in-cheek way of saying: donate money because it’s a good cause and you’re a good sport, not because you want a flashy prize.

What did go well (sort of) was the song that incorporated the names of people who donated large amounts. It was a novel idea, but in execution served even more to highlight what hoops they have to jump through just to get people to donate to a good cause.

Overall, I think the charity would better have been served by doing away with the live audience, showing practiced and pre-recorded comedy clips (whether from their archives or from new material by the appearing stars), and just having the stars at the phones in the background, telethon style.