Wanda Sykes..........WHO??

Admin Posts : 4524 Join date : 2009-06-28

Quote :: For Wanda Sykes, one show is not enough.

The 45-year-old comedian is already the co-star of CBS’s critically-acclaimed comedy “The New Adventures of Old Christine.” And she pops up on HBO’s “Curb Your Enthusiasm.”

But tonight, Sykes branched out on yet another program with “The Wanda Sykes Show.”

Many other comics depend on being sharp–Sykes’s charm is in being blunt. She’s a truth-teller, someone who tries to say what’s on everybody’s minds, or point out what’s being swept under the rug.

Sykes started off her show swinging her punchlines like a club.

In the space of a few minutes, she took shots at Anne Coulter, Rush Limbaugh and Fox News.

Did we mention the show is on Fox?

(Fox is owned by News Corp., which owns The Wall Street Journal.)

“Let me be the first person on Fox not to pick on President Obama,” she announced at the start of the program.

She then launched into a comic monologue about how Obama’s critics have gone too far.

She said people who label him a “fascist” and call for him to be voted out of office are just “dumb.”

“When’s the last time a fascist got voted out of office?” she cracked. She also pointed out the stock market’s gains while the new president has been in office.

Later, she made fun of “trickle-down” economics. “Nothing good ever trickles,” she pointed out.

After a commercial break, Sykes said “Welcome back to ‘The Wanda Sykes Show’-haven’t been cancelled yet.”

Her show has a political streak, but it was also pop culture savvy. In a segment called “Wandarama” she poked fun of Adam Lambert (she pretended to mistake his glammed-up face on the cover of his coming album to that of Rihanna), Nicolas Cage (she said the actor, who is facing money troubles, made some bad business decisions, including buying a mansion made out of thousands of smaller mansions), and dethroned Miss California USA Carrie Prejean (Sykes said of the beauty queen’s alleged sex tape that such videos always leak out: “That’s the first law of porno-dynamics.”)

More than a half-hour into the show, the guests were ushered on to the set: Mary Lynn Rajskub of “24″; actor Daryl “Chill” Mitchell; and Phil Keoghan, host of “The Amazing Race.”

(Not exactly Kanye West, Rihanna and Jay-Z, who all appeared in Jay Leno’s first show at 10 p.m.)

The panel discussed whether screaming at kids is as bad as spanking, and the possible opening of a new hotel in space.

The show then began a segment called “Inappropriate Games.” The game the guests played was called “Know Your Asians.”

Rajskub wisely pretended like the game wasn’t happening. It was the kind of bit that may prove to be controversial–which may have been the whole point of it.

It’ll be interesting to see how deeply Sykes delves into the news in coming shows. Will she take on touchy, complex topics like they do on the “Daily Show”? Her appearance at the White House Correspondents Dinner in May drew mixed reviews, but it did display a willingness to mix it up, though perhaps not as much as Stephen Colbert showed when he was the featured entertainment at the event in 2006 and pretty much torched the place.

What did you think of Sykes’s first night on the job?

http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2009/11/08/the-wanda-sykes-show-the-first-night/