John Oliver "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" guest-hosting stint hit a small bump in the road Monday night. Everything was going fine until the commercial break just before Aaron Sorkin was scheduled to appear as a guest. When the show returned, Oliver and Sorkin were sitting in front of the set with bad lighting and worse audio.
“At the end of the last segment, basically the studio exploded," Oliver explained. "We lost all power to cameras and monitors, and it seems I’ve now officially broken 'The Daily Show.'” He did his best to keep things as familiar as possible. He offered up the broken set as "your moment of zen" and even sang the closing credits music.
Once they were done making fun of the studio mishap, Sorkin talked about his own fake news program, "The Newsroom." He explained that he set it in the recent past because he liked the idea of the viewers knowing more than the characters. So when moments like Occupy Wall Street start to emerge, the viewer knows the whole story while the characters are wondering if its even newsworthy.
So far, at least some critics are on board with the way in which Sorkin retooled the show, including a framing sequence set in the present time. The Daily Beast wrote that Sorkin saved the HBO series. Fans are on board as well. The second season premiere netted a modest gain from the series premiere last year, scoring 2.2 million viewers in its initial airing.
Follow the season-long arc on "The Newsroom," Sundays at 10 p.m. ET on HBO. "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" airs Monday through Thursday at 11 p.m. ET on Comedy Central.
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