NBC is broadcasting a special tribute to the late Joan Rivers Tuesday night featuring lots of big-name comics paying homage to her trailblazing career as a relentlessly acerbic, standards-challenging stand-up, with the comics mostly delivering jokes written by Rivers herself.
Toasting Rivers’ career is a worthy-enough endeavor, and the show has a lot of laughs.
But there’s at least one thing somewhat jarring about it.
It’s on NBC.
Rivers and NBC did make history together, so good for them. But as many will recall, it did not end well.
Rivers’ rise to being Johnny Carson’s permanent guest host on The Tonight Show was, to that point in the history of television, the earliest recognition that a funny woman could make a major splash in late night.
But her decision in 1986 to accept an offer from the incipient FOX network because she perceived she was likely to be passed over when NBC chose Carson’s successor, dealt a devastating blow to her career. It precipitated an ugly personal clash that cost Rivers her relationship with Carson, who had been her advocate and mentor, as well as her association with NBC.
Not to mention her shot at enduring late-night stardom when her FOX show was quickly canceled; undone, at least partly, by the feud with Carson. A certain number of A-list guests, who preferred to maintain their relationships with Johnny, didn’t accept bookings on Rivers’ show.
That’s now a notable chapter in late-night history. No female host since has broken through as a long-term late-night host. Many highly talented women have headed shows, but for shorter runs than the big male names in the genre.
One especially painful denouement for Rivers was that she did not appear again on NBC for a quarter century. It has since been called a silent boycott, which today seems a little extreme. She wasn’t the one who mailed Tom Brokaw anthrax. She just ticked off Carson.
To his credit, Jimmy Fallon showed some honorable generosity by ending the boycott when he took over The Tonight Show in 2014, having Rivers do a walk-on during his first show in February, and then inviting her to appear as a full-fledged guest a month later.
He was rewarded with some classic Rivers boundary-shattering material, including a story about having gotten a vagina ring piercing.
Yes, it killed.
And so does a lot of the material resurrected by other comics in the new special Joan Rivers: A Dead Funny All Star Salute, which was recorded live at the Apollo Theater during last year’s New York Comedy Festival.
It includes quite a few clips of Rivers herself, including one where she is seen reading jokes off cards that she kept in an armoire-sized filing cabinet that’s said to have contained 70,000 cards total.
Many of the jokes are in a similar vein, and taste. Vaginas account for one full segment and several other isolated one-liners.
If that sounds a bit provocative for network television, even at this late date in cultural history, it does sometimes feel that way, especially since it’s airing in prime time, not late night. There are occasional bleeps of familiar unacceptable-for-broadcast words, but the themes are proof of Nikki Glaser’s description of Rivers as someone willing to “speak the unspeakable.”
Glaser tells a joke Rivers did, recalling a self-examination of her own favorite topic and wondering “why was I wearing a bunny slipper?” (They liked that one so much they had Joan tell it again later in a clip.)
At one point, Rachel Brosnahan reads off as many of Rivers’ vagina jokes as she can in 60 seconds. (By my count, she hits 14, but she went over the clock a few seconds.) Sample: “My vagina is like MySpace: popular in the 90’s, but nobody wants to go there anymore.”
Other areas are also explored, including breasts, vibrators, condoms and being constantly compared to her cousin Sheila—who died at birth.
Aubrey Plaza’s set is devoted to jokes that need to be expunged from Joan’s files because they just can’t be told in public anymore. She tells 6 or 7 of them. As in: “My anorexic neighbor is pregnant. Finally, she’s eating for one.”
For those with more exotic taste, it should be noted that NBC is offering another version of the special with additional and “uncensored” material on its streaming platform, Peacock.
The recurring theme of the NBC special is that Rivers broke barriers for women in comedy, which is unquestionably true. But not much is said about her impact on late night.
That impact is certainly on display, however. Chelsea Handler, a host who succeeded Rivers in challenging the gender barrier “18 short years later,” as she puts it, notes that she has long been compared to Rivers. As does Glaser.
But no performers on the special have more completely followed in Rivers’ footsteps than two women who have starred in TV comedy series playing characters overtly modeled on Rivers. And both of them have done it so well they’ve won the Emmy Award for Best Actress in a Comedy: Brosnahan as The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel and Jean Smart as Deborah Vance in Hacks.
Smart’s version of a contemporary Joan, fighting to make a late-night show work, includes an homage to Rivers’ career as jewelry hawker on QVC. She appears in the special, not doing stand-up on stage but speaking in a taped interview. And yes, she gets to read a few more jokes from the enormous Joan Rivers collection.
To wit: “Don’t tell me Cher doesn’t like ‘em young. She just bought a co-op in Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood.”
Joan Rivers: A Dead Funny All-Star Tribute airs on NBC tonight, May 13th, 2025, at 10pm ET/PT. An extended, uncensored version of the special will premiere May 14 on Peacock
