t 'n t luoma

Opening Credits and Introduction (11:35-11:37 p.m.)

Skip this. The TiVo already tells you who is on, and if you can’t read, Dave will tell you anyway.

HOW TO SKIP: Fast forward until Dave starts talking. Then give it a few more seconds. He is going to say “Thank you very much” about 15 times while a trumpet plays some brain skewering high pitched note for no reason other than to kill dogs. Clearly Paul Shaffer hates dogs and doesn’t want any in New York.

Monologue (11:37-11:41)

Watch this, there’s usually 3 good jokes in it. If you hit #3 and are running behind, you may just want to fast foward.

WHEN TO FAST FORWARD: As soon as Dave starts to introduce Paul, press Fast Foward (1). This will help you avoid another musical flourish designed solely to injure any dogs not killed by the intro.

Opening Segment: (11:41 - 11:55)

These are almost always completely useless and unfunny. Keep the TiVo on Fast Forward #2. This way you will bypass Rupert G or the fat guy on the yellow bike or some stupid intern situation.

They will also recap whoever is on the show. Again, press “Info” if you haven’t seen this already. Any audience participation will also take place here (chatting with someone in the audience, Stump the Band, Know Your Cuts of Meat, Know Your Current Events [which was funny, once, 6 years ago]...)

DO NOT get sucked in if you see them cut to something on the roof. Yes, we all like it when they dump stuff off the roof but that is at least 10-15 minutes away. First they are going to milk the setup until the teat falls off.

Commercial Break (11:55 - midnight)

Obivously skip this, but don’t stop just because the show comes back

Re-Entry Mini-Segment (12:00 - 12:03)

There is often another unfunny allusion back to something that happened earlier, or something coming up later (listen for the phrase: “Let’s check in with Rupert G” or “What’s going on up on the roof?”)

Possibly this is where you will get your Top 10 list, of which 3-4 will be really funny, as in you can tell them to someone else later who didn’t see the show and they’d laugh.

Then again, you might get a “Will It Float?” which will throw the schedule off by 3 minutes.

Note: There is usually 30-60 seconds of build-up to the Top 10 list between the time the topic is announced and when the list actually starts, so feel free to hit the +30 button once, at least, before it will begin.

Another Commercial Break (12:03 - 12:06)

Apparently the rules for how often you can have commercial breaks change after midnight, because this would never happen during a normal show, but they go to another commercial break, promising to come back with the first real guest.

Actual Interview! (12:06 - 12:16)

Usually the guest will come out immediately after the commercial break, unless they are still working on some setup for dropping watermelons on pool cues or whatever.

If the guest is someone of actual importance (as opposed to, say, a movie actor/actress out shilling for their latest piece of genius) they will still be there after the break. Otherwise, it’s on to something else. Probably that watermelon thing.

A 12 minute commercial break interrupted by something meaningless (12:16 - 12:28)

The rules are relaxed, but they still have limits. I mean, you couldn’t actually show 12 minutes worth of commercials in a row, right?

So here’s what they do (this is an actual log from an actual recent show):

• 12:16-12:20 — Commercial break
• 12:20-12:22 — Some stupid thing with the guy with red hair who annoys me with every breath he takes.
• 12:22-12:25 — Commercial break
• 12:25-12:25 (37 seconds) — Camera pans over the audience while someone made balloon animals
• 12:25-12:28 — Commercial break
• 12:28-12:28 (32 seconds) — More witty banter between Paul and Dave before Dave introduces the musical guest)
• 12:28-12:33 — musical guest, of which I listen to 10-15 seconds before deciding that yes, they too are crap like 258 of the previous musical guests in the past year
• 12:33-12:37 — Commercial break. This actually marks the end of the recording because although it is already scheduled to run 62 minutes, they still don’t make it on time and therefore they cut they end off and you don’t get to see it unless you have adjusted to record an extra minute, or if you watch the Late Late Show.

So if you add that all up you get about 4 minutes of monologue and about 10 minutes of interview, and about 1 minute to decide whether the musical guest is any good. You may need another minute or two for the Top 10 list, but they don’t do that every night.

I have just saved you 47 minutes. You’re welcome.

Footnotes:

1. Note: On our TV, if you press Fast Forward on the TiVo once while you have the captioning turned on, the captions still appear, so if you are really curious you can see it without hearing it. But you’ll want to press Fast Forward twice to save time once you realize that you really aren’t missing anything. ↩