The "Colbert Report" report

I've watched "The Colbert Report" every night so far, and I want to be optimistic, but the prognosis isn't good right now.

The top segment, "Word," was funny as hell the first night and coasted along after that, but by the night that Fareed Zakarian was the guest, you could hear crickets chirping in the studio. It was painfully, squirming-in-your-chair not-funny.

And is it me, or have we heard Colbert muff his lines more in the last five nights than in his 8 years on "The Daily Show"? I simply don't know what to make of that.

But the most important problem is that the "interview" sections just don't work. Stone Phillips was funny, and Leslie Stahl was a good sport, but the whole premise is flawed. Colbert's character--a funny, narcissistic twit--is simply too much of a narcissistic twit to focus on anyone else in an interview setting. (By comparison, Jon Stewart's self-deprecating humor, and the comparatively small gap between his on-air persona and himself, I imagine, make him perfect as an interviewer, almost to a fault: He can seem genuinely interested in whoever he's interviewing, even if it's Rick Santorum.)

The long shot of Colbert strutting proudly over to the interview corner of the set doesn’t do much for me, but it's not a hanging offense. On the other hand, the preoccupation with the Colbert "narcissistic twit" persona causes serious problems in the interviews. For example, Leslie Stahl got a free pass twice, first when she blithely asserted that the Watergate hearings were the work of "the opposition party" (yes, the Democrats held both houses of Congress, but the hearings were conspicuously, almost excruciatingly bipartisan; the Republicans [except for GOP head George H. W. Bush] were on board). And, a few minutes later, she claimed that, since Reagan, "The center of the country has definitely shifted to the right. And there we sit," Colbert let that pass too, despite the strong available evidence to the contrary. You could see Colbert was more interested in his next bit of shtick than pinning her down.

I can't guarantee Stewart would have nailed her on either of those misstatements, but at least there was a fair chance he might have. Witness his civil-but-firm interview last night with William Kristol (the man whose job it once was to make VP Dan Quayle look smart, and leader of the "criminalization of politics" defense of the Bush outing of Plame).

I want the show to succeed, but I don't see it happening yet. It's only a little over 1 week into its 8 week run, so maybe it's only fair to give it room to grow. Cross your fingers.