The great blonde hope
Women talkshow hosts rule the daytime hours, but when the clock strikes 11 p.m., you can basically choose between eight different flavors of testosterone if you want to get your late-night TV fix. (For those who are counting, that's Leno, Letterman, Conan, Jimmy Kimmel, Craig Ferguson, Carson Daly, Jon Stewart, and Stephen Colbert.)
Given that most late-night shows cater to male viewers more than female ones, this makes no sense at all. If you're turning to TV after midnight for laffs and camaraderie, that means you're alone, either physically or spiritually, and who would most men rather have shepherd them through their dark nights of the soul? Jimmy Kimmel, or a beautiful blonde who's just as crass and irreverent and busty as Kimmel, but presumably smells a whole lot better?
This, at least, appears to be the thinking behind the E! show Chelsea Lately. Hosted by 32-year-old comedian, author, and basic cable veteran Chelsea Handler, the half-hour show debuted in July for a preliminary six-week run. According to Variety, Chelsea Lately has increased overall viewership for its timeslot by 16 percent, and viewership amongst 25 - 54 year-old men is up a whopping 41 percent. While these stats are apparently not quite eye-popping enough to get the commitphobic E! to marry Chelsea Lately, it has agreed to live together with her through the end of the year.
No doubt it goes both ways though -- one senses this is just a starter show for Handler, and when a bigger, better deal comes along, she'll be packing her bags.
Certainly it would be hard to get smaller than Chelsea Lately. Everything about this show is tiny -- her midget sidekick Chuy, the micro-stars who show up to chat, the comedic chops of the panelists who help Handler kick things off each night by discussing the latest celebrity trainwrecks. Most of all, the show's ambitions are small. Handler has a rude, sharp wit that she's not afraid to aim at her guests or herself, but she seems more than willing to settle for the most expedient laugh too. Her go-to shtick involves talking dirty to partially deaf septugenarians in the throes of Alzheimers, and is there really anything hackier than that?
Still, there's something interesting going on on Chelsea Lately. Waggling her soccer MILF ass at the camera with an ironic, you-know-you-want-it assurance, charming her guests with a blinding flash of her Chiclet-sized choppers, she's always the hottest, funniest, smartest, coolest person in the room. And thus she reverses the usual dynamics of talkshow starf--king.
Instead of dorky Jay drooling over Nicole Kidman or geeky Conan beseeching George Clooney for swinging bachelor tips, Handler's the object of her desire on her show. Another leggy, handsome blonde -- Craig Kilborn -- used similar tactics to climb all the way to the lower middle of the late-night pantheon not so long ago. If she plays her own brand of self-deprecating narcissism right, she may eventually reach such heights too.
A frequent contributor to Las Vegas Weekly, Greg Beato has also written for SPIN, Blender, Reason, Time.com, and many other publications. Email Greg at [email protected]