That Wasn’t The Week Was It?

Hey, can someone explain this?

Because we watched The Weekly With Charlie Pickering – Series 3 Ep 2 (may God have mercy on our souls) and one thing we did not see was “special guests South Park creators Trey Parker & Matt Stone.” Okay, that’s two things.

In fact, we went back and checked last week’s episode, which most definitely ended with “We’ll be back next week with our guests Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the creators of South Park – take a look”, followed by a clip from the actual interview where the duo reveal they “wouldn’t make fun of George Miller” because “We worship that dude”. Not exactly comedy gold, but they’re big names; just having them on the show is the point.

So Pickering did the interview, they filmed it, they checked that the tape recorded it, having checked that the tape recorded it they decided they would announce it as next week’s interview and put a clip from the tape to air, and then… what? Someone realised “oh wait, this is dull as fuck, into the bin with you”?

And speaking of things missing from The Weekly, what happened to the comedy? Only kidding – that was never there*. But what happened to Briggs? Last week established him as a new member of the cast:

This week? No sign.

It wasn’t like they said “and now occasional guest star like he was in 2016, Briggs” – he was introduced in the opening credits as a new regular member of the cast.

Last year, The Weekly promised to put the sense back into the nonsense. In 2017, the nonsense has defeated us. Each week, Charlie Pickering, along with Kitty Flanagan, Tom Gleeson, and – joining the team – Adam Briggs, will pick the news apart, and then attempt to put it back together, hoping that no one will notice the bits they broke.

“Joining the team”. For one episode. Losing one segment in only your second episode of the year might be understandable: losing both a big interview and one-quarter of your on-air team seems a little bit more of a concern.

(that said, Briggs is still in the opening credits if you go through it frame by frame, so we’re guessing he’ll be back)

Someone we’re guessing won’t be back is Trey Parker and Matt Stone. Okay, that’s two someones. But as this week’s episode ended with a promo for an interview next week with Matt Damon, it seems likely that whatever happened to Charlie Pickering’s clearly unbroadcastable interview is permanent.

Mind you, we’re not holding our breath for Matt Damon to show up next week either.

*what was the deal with that seemingly endless knock-off of that Dutch video sucking up to Trump? The original was nothing special, so who thought we needed an even shittier Australian version oh wait the Dutch one went viral and we’re back on that whole “make some clips we can get websites to run so we look like we’re in touch with the yoof despite the all the forty-something suit-wearing cast members” thing.