Reply #18: You Don't Have To Be An Ideological Purist........ [View All]

[Paladin]

....to be dismayed by what's happened to Maher's show this season.

As I said in another one of the interminable number of "Maher Really Sucks!" threads, there's a lot more to it than Maher doing some sort of Dennis Miller conversion to the Dark Side. His guests this season aren't for shit---clunky, non-responsive, bland (when even Richard Belzer comes off as subdued, you know there's a problem). Maher himself seems listless and sullen, even trips over his lines on occasion. The quality of the writing and the overall timing and pace of the show are terrible, nothing like the sharp production values of prior seasons.

Sometime in the future, six weeks or six years from now, the whole story will come out. If I had to guess, I'd say either (a) rampant drug use, or (b) a new production team that doesn't know what the hell it's doing---a la "Saturday Night Live." In any case, it's very unfortunate. Maher's show used to be one of my favorites; I can't watch it anymore......