David Letterman’s Netflix talk show would be much better without the “late-night questions”

Slate

Willa Paskin says My Next Guest Needs No Introduction offers a “perfectly serviceable interview” of former President Obama, but Letterman’s “questions are late-night questions: They are designed to elicit an expected or predicted bit, not to meander, surprise, or plumb.” As she notes, there is one point where Obama tried to “show Letterman a way to do the new show differently” by “tossing” a question back at the former Late Show host. But Dave would have none of it. In the end, it was Obama who asked the most unpredictable question of the episode: Does Letterman feel lucky? Letterman's Netflix talk show, says Paskin “is pleasant, entertaining, occasionally moving, a little funny, and almost indistinguishable from a standard late-night interview, just stretched out. It is long, but it is not particularly deep. New network, new set, new beard: same Dave. You can take the host out of late night, but you can’t take the late night out of the host. “

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