Six Months In, The Daily Show’s Great Jon Stewart Experiment Is Proof That You Can Go Home Again

Jon Stewart certainly didn’t need another six months as host of The Daily Show to validate that he has been one of the major stars in the history of late-night television.

But now that he has reached that little milestone, let the validation ring from every bell tower. (Or cell tower, depending on your device of choice.)

Exactly six months into his comeback in late night (he returned to the air on February 12; this past Monday’s show was on August 12), Stewart is giving his fans the impression that he merely ducked out for a few minutes to freshen up. There is no discernible change in his comic timing, his passion for skewering the inanity of both politics and the media, nor his commanding presence on The Daily Show stage.

Or as Doug Herzog, president of Comedy Central during Stewart’s Emmy-drenched original run, tells LateNighter: “Jon has lost nothing off his fastball.”

It is an apt metaphor because it basically corresponds to Nolan Ryan throwing no-hitters when the rest of his pitching contemporaries had long since stopped throwing anything except parties.

After missing last week’s show due to a case of COVID, Stewart returned this past Monday ready to rock and roll. His long, carefully crafted dissection of Donald Trump lamenting the disappearance of his comfortable old target, Sleepy/Crooked Joe Biden, and being succeeded by someone actually young and healthy—mixed with an extended riff on the mistaken identity tale of Willie Brown and the plunging helicopter—was like a serving of the specialty of the house, Laughs Out Loud in POV Sauce, which has been off the menu for too long.

As great as this week’s episode was, Stewart’s previous show (two weeks earlier, on July 29)—which came in the wake of the precipitous departure of Biden from the presidential race and the shockingly electric insertion of Kamala Harris in his place—was at a level with classic Stewart Daily Show editions circa 2000, or 2004, or 2008, or 2012, or many other seasons in between and beyond. 

The killer line from that Monday show was directed at Republicans: “I’m a fair person; you can replace your old guy, too.”

If there had been any doubters about Stewart’s decision to resume his legendary late-night career—and I sure hadn’t noticed any, though, to be fair, legends often totally muck up the concept of resumption—they ought to have been laughed out of the studio, right alongside Trump and Stewart’s other political victims.

“I think the comeback has gone very well,” Herzog said in a text interview. “Jon is as good as ever—sharp, funny as ever. Ratings are up.”

For an ex-TV CEO, there is no more life-affirming statement than those last three words.

Stewart is proving at least three things in this return to glory:

• You can go home again.
• Talent does not necessarily diminish over time, especially not for the truly great ones.
• A late-night star has a very particular set of skills; skills they have acquired over very long careers; skills that make them a nightmare for people who try to replace them. (Apologies to Mr. Neeson.)

The Daily Show was adrift before Stewart’s decision to sign on again, with the series not sure who to insert as host after the apparent choice, Hasan Minhaj, went up in a smoke of joke inquisition.

The drift does not have much to do with the performance of the current lineup of correspondents, who are largely first-rate. They get to host most of the shows with Stewart only a once-a-week participant, and they present their own sets of particular skills. The week of Stewart’s illness was an especially strong one for Michael Kosta as host, even if dumping a dead bear in Central Park kind of writes itself.

What remains unresolved is a rather large and ominous question: What happens next?

Herzog, who now has the perspective of the top insider-turned-outsider, said it was undeniable that “the platform has diminished dramatically.” The platform being Comedy Central as a distributor. Once the launchpad for a slew of groundbreaking comedy franchises, the cable channel is now mostly a parking lot for re-runs of South Park and The Office.

The Daily Show is an oasis of great, fresh comedy in a desert of golden oldies. The situation underscores a much larger question for late night and original daily production of all kinds: How could there ever be no place for exceptional entertainment like this?

It might prove too challenging in the streaming environment that now dominates television, but Stewart is demonstrating that a franchise like The Daily Show is both viable and close to essential. Would that mean it could and should survive whatever happens to the pool it still swims in, linear television, now ever shrinking inward from the edge?

Herzog agrees that The Daily Show brand remains potent and could, at least in theory, move elsewhere in the TV firmament.

But for now, with the high-stakes moment of the current presidential election, it is gratifying that The Daily Show is still pumping out big-laugh comedy four nights a week.

Beginning Monday, The Daily Show will get the chance to elevate its profile yet again, as it makes a road trip to Chicago to produce a week of episodes around the Democratic National Convention (with Stewart hosting a live episode on Thursday night).

That is properly ambitious for a show still putting up the good fight and sending out the best pugilist it has ever had to deliver big blows—even if only once a week.

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