Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Lights Out With David Spade’ On Comedy Central, Where The Former ‘SNL’er Hosts A Panel Show About Pop Culture

There may be some people out there (not us) who wonder how David Spade has been able to have such a long and productive career, including two long-running sitcoms. We think it’s because he comes off like he just DGAF — but we know he does, or else he wouldn’t keep working. There aren’t many comedians that can balance that line of being funny by seeming bored, but Spade as conquered that style. His new talk show, Lights Out With David Spade, is built around his style and funny pop-culture takes. Read on for more…

LIGHTS OUT WITH DAVID SPADE: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: David Spade is shown doing an Instastory where he talks about how it’s not true that he owes his career to Adam Sandler… then rattles off all the movies and shows he was in that Sandler produced. But “I got this one all by myself … with a little help from Chris Rock.”

The Gist: Lights Out With David Spade is a response to the over-Trumpization of late night. It’s a pretty straightforward panel show, with Spade coming out to do a monologue of mostly corny jokes related to pop-culture, social media, and pretty much any topic that doesn’t involve politics or our current president. In the first episode, he also has the guest panel — Whitney Cummings, Neal Brennan and Erik Griffin — out while he does his monologue. It seems like he regretted that choice as soon as his buddies started heckling him with the first joke. One of the funnier groaners was about the kid who won the Fortnite tournament this weekend. “That’s the most money a child has won for playing video games without having to sit in Michael Jackson’s lap.”

Then he sits for the panel, where he gives topics for the three of them to riff on for a few minutes until they go to the next topic or commercial. One topic was about Instagram not showing “likes” anymore, another was about a grasshopper infestation in Las Vegas. One segment had a pre-taped bit where Spade and Jeff Ross send Spade’s driver on stage to do standup and feed him lines through an earpiece to see how many laughs he can get.

Our Take: There’s nothing particularly revolutionary about Lights Out With David Spade, which Spade is an executive producer, along with Alex Murray, Marc Gurvitz, Brad Wollack and Tom Brunelle. Spade has been giving us his take on pop culture, in the same semi-uninterested tone, since his SNL days almost 30 years ago. He’s the master of UPUD — Under Promise and Under Deliver — to the point where he’s made it the basis of his career. He looks like he doesn’t care, and that’s what makes his observations hit the mark.

This is Comedy Central’s fourth attempt at giving The Daily Show a lead-out since The Colbert Report ended five years ago; both Larry Wilmore’s The Nightly Show and Jordan Klepper’s The Opposition suffered from not finding their way right off the bat, and, in the case of Wilmore, being too dependent on panel discussions early in its run. @Midnight was hilarious but just didn’t flow right with TDS.

Lights Out has the same problem. Continuing to throw out topics for comedians to riff on for three segments gets old in a hurry, and is only really entertaining if the panelists are really funny or there’s real conversation happening. In the first episode, Brennan and Cummings especially got off some good lines — Brennan said to Spade “I’m glad you’re finally biting the bullet and starting a podcast” — but nothing really got rolling. And coming out of a break that had a Chris Rock video that wished Spade luck, the panel took way too long telling inside-baseball Chris Rock stories.

The show’s best segment was the remote, pre-taped bit where Spade and Ross fed lines to Spade’s driver, mainly because the guy’s dry line readings were better than you’d think for someone not trained to be a stand-up, and when he messed up, it was even funnier. Was the audience at that comedy club in on the joke? Maybe. But hearing the guy nail some of the lines and mess up others was the most entertaining thing on the whole show.

We’re OK with the show’s loose format, and we’re very happy that they don’t waste time on long panel introductions or copious plugs (they’re shown on a screen before the last commercial break), but what will separate the show from the other attempts CC have made at 11:30 is the fact that there isn’t one mentioned of the president or any other political topics. Just that basic difference is refreshing in 2019.

Sex and Skin: Not that kind of show.

Parting Shot: Spade decides to ditch the prepared bit for the last segment and he just riffs on how stupid it was for him to run out of gas on the way to the studio, considering how many warnings today’s cars give you before you actually run out of gas.

Sleeper Star: Matt Stonerock, Spade’s driver, has a promising stand-up career ahead of him… as long as his boss feeds him all his lines.

Most Pilot-y Line: Either Spade needs to do more remote bits per episode or just let topics breathe. Did we really need to see the video of Armie Hammer’s son chewing his toe and have a discussion about it?

Our Call: STREAM IT. If you like David Spade, or if you just want some funny late night entertainment that doesn’t make you angry at the same time, Lights Out With David Spade is for you.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, VanityFair.com, Playboy.com, Fast Company’s Co.Create and elsewhere.

Stream Lights Out With David Spade on Comedy Central