No Late Nights for Lebanon

I don't currently watch a lot of TV, local or otherwise, but as a kid and young teen, you bet I did; I watched the hell out of that TV, especially at night... Every evening, one of my rituals would be to tune in to the Paramount Comedy Channel, which existed back then, and watch The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, eagerly anticipating the following program, the highlight of the night: Late Night with Conan O'Brien. In addition to these two, I sometimes caught Late Show with David Letterman, though not as frequently. If it was a late night American talk show, I knew I couldn't lose.

The formula of funny host + house band+ standup + skits + celebrity guests + musical guest became the golden standard of entertainment for me. You got jokes, you got some parody and "experimental material", like when Leno would showcase some funny newspaper clippings or Conan would take a prophetic look into the year 2000 (even well after the year had passed...), and you got a random musical performance that you may have ended up liking.

Currently, Lebanon's best attempt to emulate the late night talk show format is Hayda Haki, hosted by Adel Karam. It debuted around a year ago, and is currently in its second season. However, I don't think this trainwreck remotely qualifies as a late night talk show. It's a travesty! It's like if you gave a kid some paper and crayons, and asked them to draw a person, and they present you with a crude stick figure smeared with their own shit. You had one job...

To explain why I feel this way, I'll have to address some issues I've picked up on in the show, and do a bit of comparison between it and what I consider a model late night talk show, Late Night with Conan O'Brien, or even his current show Conan: same host, same level of excellence!  Speaking of hosts, a handful of these issues relate directly to the host himself, so that should be as good a place to begin as any.

CoCo: the host with the most

I grew up on S.L. Chi, La Youmal and even Abou Riad, so for years I had nothing but respect and fondness for Adel Karam. He even starred in S.L. Film, which I still wholeheartedly regard as one of the greatest Lebanese movies ever made; I am not even being sarcastic right now. And I once bumped into him in a barber shop in 2010 and gave him a thumbs up; a thumbs up I would later wish to take back...

When I first saw Adel hosting Hayda Haki, I quickly realized why despite my enjoyment of his past endeavors, this new gig just wasn't his thing: Adel is an actor, not a comedian. Sure he has the personality and can crack a couple corny jokes here and there, but he doesn't write his own material, or improvise, or use physical humor. What you see on the show is a very stiff delivery of pre-written, heavily rehearsed material. It's more akin to theater: the content is humorous, but the execution is rigid and not subject to change or elaboration.

Compare him to Conan, who regularly adlibs and improvises, uses his body and reacts to the audience. If an audience member were to go "I love you Conaaaan!" while he's delivering his opening monologue, he would probably respond with "Yes, I love you too sir…" or "Whoa!" or even just laugh! A genuine human reaction goddamit! Adel on the other hand would probably just pause and grin, then continue where he left off.

Alright, what did I say about interrupting me?
Great, now I have to start over...

Now for a more subjective issue. It's just a matter of taste really, but I feel like it could make or break a show for a viewer, and I will be talking a whole lot about it: Adel is smarmy as hell! He's got this arrogant jagal az3ar persona that rubs me the wrong way, and I just can't relate to him at all. If you're into that, sure whatever, but I really would have liked to see someone more likable and endearing, you know? 

Like Georges Khabbaz for instance, with his Charlie Chaplin inspired awkward lovable goofball schtick. Yes he's an actor too, but at least he makes me laugh! Or maybe Adel's frequent co-star, Abbas Chahine, with his George Costanza-esque fits of rage and frustration, channeling the voice of the average down on his luck, just trying to get by, Lebanese citizen. That's who I want to see addressing me every week! Not some smug douchebag!

If you've never seen the show, you may think I'm exaggerating a bit. Let's do a case study then and see how a certain scenario would go down on Conan, and then Hayda Haki. The situation is: the show's guest is a woman who happens to be sexually attractive. Cool? Let's go!

When supermodel Marisa Miller, voted Sexiest Woman in the World by FHM magazine, stopped by Conan, it went like this:

He does the over-the-top "Yes! Woohoo! Sexy lady!" gags at the beginning, and they're silly and goofy, pretty funny stuff. Now that those are out of the way, the rest is just a casual chat about her career, her hobbies, some funny anecdotes, which though had some slightly sexual undertones, and I'm thinking about the story where she had her pants accidentally pulled down during a game of American football, weren't at her own expense; she was in on the joke, she was telling the joke!

Hell, she was even talking about how she learned to swordfight and said "I love doing physical things", but Conan didn't take a single shot. Instead, he allowed his guest to tell her story, which is the whole point of the interview: to learn more about the lady and get viewers to know her as more than just a pretty face in magazines. This interview lasted for about 8 minutes by the way.

Now when pop star Haifa Wehbe stopped by Hayda Haki, it went like this:

Adel begins his interview with such totally not pervy quips like "Ana el albe 3ambidi2…", "Smalla 3leyke, smalla 3leyke!" and "Yekhzel3en 3annik… Smalla, le3be!" Hey Adel, if your lighthearted ice-breaker remarks about how sexy your guest is could seamlessly fit right into the dialogue of a gritty back alley rape scene, you're fucking it up big time man! Are you creeped out yet ladies? Well stick around! We still have an hour of this to go! 

After putting his guest at ease with his razor sharp wit and tasteful humor, Adel proceeds to ask her about stuff, a lot of irrelevant stuff, with some granules of useful information here and there, like how she feels about being a fashion icon, or her acting and singing work. Whenever she was asked about her career, Haifa did give some genuine responses and talked about her projects and collaborations; she's clearly not just there to look pretty. Despite being extremely sexy, she doesn't want this whole thing to be about how sexy she is.

But no matter what the topic was, Adel always ends up going back to that godawful sleazy horndog routine. That was his end-game really: spewing out as many cheesy pickup lines and lewd remarks as humanly possible. Oh sorry, I meant, as Tex Avery Wolf-ly possible. For fuck's sake, he even asked whether or not she gets raped in the film she's promoting, but he didn't phrase it like "Well, it's been a hot topic in the press lately, so I'd like you to address this now for the people at home", oh no, he just went in all "Yeah nice movie babe, so do you get raped in it or what? C'mooon don't be shy. Woof!".

Adel conducting an in-depth interview

Let me say this, as a big fan of George Carlin and edgy comedy in general: you have every right to be as offensive as you'd like to be, as long as you're funny about it. It's your right, it's your voice, it's your style of humor. But if you're going to be both offensive and insufferably lame, that's just a double fail my friend…

On the subject of being offensive and funny: this show seems to have never heard of parody, satire, or pretty much any form of comedy that isn't an opinionated joke. After Conan's monologue, he would play a pre-recorded skit, or bring in some actors and have something "spontaneously" occur live in the studio, or whatever, you get the idea. There's effort and variety.

Now Adel, he just sits at his desk, giving his pre-written carefully rehearsed opinions on a news item or video or whatever the researchers found for him to feel strongly about that week. And he doesn't take a tongue-in-cheek satirical stance, like ChiNN do, or shoot a little sketch parodying a certain event that took place earlier in the week, but instead, just directly expresses agreement or disagreement with the issue and jokes about it. It's like getting in a taxi with an annoying cabbie once per week.

Effort and variety

Did I mention how long this show is by the way? On average, a late night talk show, with monologue, skits, 2 guests, and a musical act, has a running time of about an hour tops. You know how long Hayda Haki is? With it's monologue, Adel's crap and a mere one guest? An hour and a half! I mean yeah, obviously, Adel's so full of charisma and imagination, why the hell not!

They wanted to keep him on for a measly hour, but when he did that impression of Popeye singing Fairouz while dancing dabke on rollerblades, they knew, they immediately knew, what the people wanted... What the people deserved! Lucky for the people, the house band are there to keep doing a mini impromptu jam after every couple jokes to keep the audience awake; I am not kidding. 

They have to do something at least, since the producers don't even trust them enough to perform an opening theme for the show live every week. Instead it's some irrelevant electro-blues ringtone thing. God forbid you compose a catchy tune that reflects the style and tone of the show and gives it a unique identity, unlike this crap you have now, this uninspired, generic... Totally lame and... Cheesy... On second thought, I take it back: this theme works fine as is. Excellent choice.

But you know, the band isn't just there to play music, for you see, it is a longstanding late night talk show tradition for the host to chat with the bandleader every now and then, for comedic effect of course! David Letterman has keyboardist Paul Schaffer, Jay Leno had guitarist Kevin Eubanks, Jimmy Fallon has The Roots, and Conan had drummer Max Weinberg, who he regularly involved in skits. A host and a bandleader can be a great duo!

A great duo!

Filling that role on Hayda Haki is guitarist Chady Nashef... and, well he's a little dry. But seriously though: I don't feel it would be entirely fair of me to be too harsh on the guy. After all, he's a decent guitarist who scored a bigtime gig, and I don't think he aspires to become a comedian himself or anything. But nonetheless, I've gotta say it: Adel's interactions with Chady are some of the most inexplicably awkward moments in the entire show... And I don't mean "Conan and Max staring blankly at one another" awkward, I mean "Whaaaa?"

He seems like a jolly dude really, always chuckling at Adel's jokes, but other than that, he doesn't really add much. Adel's just obligated to make small talk with him because he needs the host-bandleader relationship to happen, but the chemistry's clearly not there, so it just feels weird and forced. Again, the dude was hired to play guitar, and he does indeed do that! It's not in his job description to be a hilarious comic foil for Adel. But still... Whaaaa?

You can't stay mad at that face though... Rock on bro

So, to sum it up: what's wrong with Hayda Haki? It's way too long, the humor is unimaginative and forced, the band only serves as cheap filler, and the host is mercilessly unbearable. 

Look, I don't shit on things for the hell of it, you know? I genuinely want there to be a great late night talk show in Lebanon some day! With a funny host who can hold his own out there and keep us laughing, a band that can rock the studio and get everybody dancing (even at home), clever jokes that don't insult the audience's intelligence, skits, sketches, gags, props and pranks we'd be excited to tune in for week after week and talk about the next day with our friends, guests of all fields and backgrounds, from singers to fashion designers to athletes, and musical guests from both the mainstream and alternative music scenes, giving artists of all genres and styles a platform to be heard. HAYDA haki… see what I did there?