Might as Well Get This Over With

The Weekly is back and who gives a fuck. Maybe someone somewhere outside the upper levels of ABC management is excited about the return – for an eleventh season – of “Bitchy News”. We seriously doubt it. Have you ever heard anyone discuss anything they’ve seen on The Weekly? We haven’t, and we know people who’ve worked on it.

Time for a contractually mandated moment of balance. A big part of what makes The Weekly such a piece of shit comes from factors outside the show itself. If it aired at, say, 10.30pm on a Sunday night, the lowered expectations that come from a graveyard timeslot might possibly make the format seem more entertaining. If it was hosted by, say, a pile of old laundry, then at least it wouldn’t be hosted by Charlie Pickering. If civilisation collapsed and it was the only form of entertainment left, at least the survivors would have an enemy to unify against. And so on.

The ABC’s topical comedy – we can’t even lump this one under the extremely broad term “satire” – has always been a bit hit-and-miss. But as it currently stands, The Weekly is barely worthy of the term “work experience project”. Having a host make fun of news clips only requires a decent host and decent jokes; The Weekly has neither.

As a host, Pickering is a smug smartarse when reading the news, and an easily confused low-status dimwit when doing anything else. It’s not that we don’t enjoy on some level the way Rhys Nicholson treats him dismissively. There’s just no clear comedy reason for the shift. We’re meant to cheer Pickering on when he sticks it to the man, and then side with his guests when they treat him like shit?

You know what? Who cares. Pickering is a crap host, but it’s not like Daryl Somers wasn’t worse and his career spanned decades. But occasionally Daryl had decent material. Pickering gets gear like having Nicholson ask him what his favourite race is and he says “either The Jews or the Tour de France”. Which okay, let’s break this one down:

Maybe the joke is meant to be that Pickering has misunderstood the question in a hilariously inappropriate fashion. So why does he give two answers? Maybe the joke is meant to be that Pickering has understood the question and has given a hilariously inappropriate answer. So why does he give two answers? The set up for the joke is clearly pointing to the comedy answer being “the Tour de France”. So why does he even mention that his favourite race is the Jews*?

Also, and this is one of the things that has consistently given us the shits about The Weekly pretty much since it’s inception, why would anyone with the slightest awareness of what’s going on in Australia and the world today think that now is a good time to make a confused throwaway joke about race?

Not that you can’t make jokes about race, or any other sensitive topic if that’s what floats your boat. But when people are doing it tough, a decent comedian’s job is to make fun of the people making life hard for others. Or at least, stop and have a think about what kind of jokes you want to make on the subject.

The Weekly is stuffed gullet to gills with lazy jokes about how all politicans are basically the same and rich people are a bit silly and reality television is trashy and breakfast television is a great place to find enough material to fill out the rest of the show. The result is beneath you, us, and probably even Charlie Pickering.

The only difference is, he gets a six figure salary out of it.

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*you can probably figure it out