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You know the philosophical problem, the ship of Theseus?
The ship has the same name, but its dry-docked and being used as a novelty restaurant.
This isnt necessarily a bad thing.
I, for one, love restaurants shaped like dumb shit.
One significant change in the history of late night that has been on my mind this week is pretaping.
Jimmy Kimmel and Seth Meyers ran reruns.
Both options would have been unthinkable a decade or so ago.
Late night used to be live.
Really, really live.
Guest hosts made sense in the pre-digital days.
It still happens occasionally today.Jennifer Lawrence guested for Jimmy Kimmel, andJordan Klepper filled in for Trevor Noah.
The only guest hosts we got this weekwere onThe Late Show, where different celebs interviewed Stephen Colbert.
But does it even count as guest hosting if the real host is still there?
Truth be told, I miss seeing Jon Stewart behind a desk.
But he never seemed to really be steering the show.
Colbert remained the soft control behind the throne.
There are ways to spot a pretaped segment.
Celebrity cameos are hard to schedule, for example.
Ariana Grande hurt her wrist taping a Carpool Karaoke back in August, butthe segment didnt airuntil Halloween.
In fact,The Late Late Showbroke up her Karaoke into two segments that aired weeks apart.
Pretaped monologues rely on stories that dont usually make the headlines.
A new study has found _____ or Today is National ____ Day are telltale signs of banked material.
Thanksgiving jokes can be planned in advance.
Jokes about Rachel Blooms tweet have to be made in the moment.
But there are advantages to pretaping.
The TBS show has been on hiatus, prepping for itssleek new form in 2019.
If it was just Conan yelling at a family, thats mean.
But the family speaking Japanese to each other lets them get some power back.
Someone on Twitter will always be more timely, more incisive, and more uncensored.
TheLarge Cow jokesIve seen online far outmatch both Corden and Jimmy Fallons attempts this week.
TVs advantage lies in production values.
Famous people saying things expensively that is what mainstream media is for.
Do we lose something in immediacy?
But we more than make up for it in Ariana Grande and trips to Japan.
