The Daily Show With Jon Stewart was surprisingly without Jon Stewart last night, leaving Jason Jones to take over the show for the night. Needless to say, it was a pretty loose episode.
Jones explained at the start of the show that Stewart was out sick with the “Bubons, an illness that only affects people from New Jersey.” That lead to the first portion of the night, which covered Vice President Joe Biden’s latest flub, which gave Jones amble opportunity to mention how long he’s been on the show without taking the No. 1 position. The Canadian-born Jones has been on the show since 2005 and this was the first time he had ever hosted.
During the second segment, Samantha Bee, who has been a correspondent since 2003 and happens to be Jones’ wife, tried to take over the show in an introduction to her latest story. She covered the difficulties of finding how many people are really shot and killed by police officers in the U.S.
Thankfully, Jones and Bee didn’t have a guest with a super-serious topic to discuss. Instead, it was former Daily Show correspondent Wyatt Cenac, who has a Netflix special and new comedy album to talk about. Obviously, that wasn’t their main topic, since they also talked about Cenac’s dreams of doing a media tour for dead authors.
Last night’s show didn’t really feel like a full episode of The Daily Show. Had Jones been given more time to prepare, it might have gone over better, but he wasn’t as great as John Oliver was last summer. Although, it did take Oliver a while to fit in comfortably and now he’s got his own show on HBO, Last Week Tonight.
Tonight’s guest is scheduled to be Leon Panetta, with Jeremy Renner set for Thursday.