'The Jim Norton Show': Jim Norton Creates His Own Anti-Late Night Show

Jim Norton isn’t the first person you would think to give a talk show to, but after seeing his new (and free!) series, The Jim Norton Show on Vice.com, it’s clear this should have been done ages ago.

Norton is no stranger to hosting. For over a decade he was third mike on the (former) Opie and Anthony Show on Sirius-XM, where he also airs a weekly advice show on Wednesdays. And in his hosting and his comedy, Norton is aggressive and brutal, targeting himself with precision as much as anyone else. He is as obsessed with the truth as much as Fox Mulder, and uses comedy as a method of uncovering the truth beneath all of our hypocrisies, exposing the attack on Freedom of Speech that this country is currently going through. These themes exist in all facets of Norton’s work, and meld together perfectly in this anti-late night show.

Structurally, there are familiar points. Norton is introduced, comes out on a set, and does a brief monologue that involves minor audience interaction before leading to a pair of pre-taped bits before interviewing Dana White and Mike Tyson. Of course, this is where the commonalities end as Norton re-envisions the talk show through his own lens. The announcer is transsexual pornstar Bailey Jay; his monologue is barbaric and self-effacing, pointing out the milquetoast and fake nature of talk shows, as well as the status of his career the fact that he can’t even get a show on television. A joke may not go over or the audience may react awkwardly and rather than immediately seguing into another, Norton acknowledges the bomb and lets us all stew in the collateral damage of it. It’s similar to what Johnny Carson would do but so much more uncomfortable. You can’t help but clench until the moment’s passed and someone removes the shrapnel from our skin.

Norton admits his idea for the series is closer to Dick Cavett than Conan O’Brien. His interviews are more conversational and the set is more about functionality than it is about flash. Meanwhile, the show itself stands as being unique in performance. If he trips over a word or asks a dumb question and turns to the audience to point it out and give himself a big “Yuck!” and considers out loud why he hasn’t killed himself. At one point, a fake plant falls onto Tyson who tries to fix it. Norton pushes it over and it falls and he mutters several obscenities. At his request, this was not edited out. He wants all of this in, warts and all.

It’s no surprise, since Norton’s humor is based so much in honesty. He would hate to have the moment taken out even if it was done seamlessly — even the unfunny bits are kind of funny because they don’t work. He wouldn’t want it taken out because it would be too self-serving and egotistical. A through-line can be made to the short-lived, but incredibly loveable, Tough Crowd with Colin Quinn where Norton was a frequent guest. Norton and Quinn are old school comedians who use comedy to scratch through to the truth of themselves or their topics, and seeing this translate into cringe-worthy moments for all to see is as revealing as it is truthful. Watching The Jim Norton Show, you can’t help but feel you’re seeing something distilled and unscripted, like we were watching the dailies and not the aired cut, and that’s to the credit of Norton’s vision. (It certainly doesn’t hurt having Jesse Joyce and Dave Attell listed as consultants.)

There’s none of the padding or soft touches that comes with Bethanny, the gossip of Wendy Williams, the overproduced melodrama of Steve Wilkos, narrative driving The Daily Show or the small talk of late night. This is an anti-talk show the way Andy Kaufman’s Gatsby reading was anti-comedy. Rather than ask cheap little questions and lead to the plugs his guests are there to promote, Norton asks deep questions about addiction and relationships, sometimes offering his own humiliations as a way of easing his guests and getting them to reveal more about themselves. Norton himself has stated he will refuse anyone who has talking points they won’t discuss.

Hopefully in the future, Norton may wish to have either one guest for the entire hour or two guests separated in the two segments. In this current iteration, people tend to talk over one another and it’s hard to hone in on whose voice we should be focusing on; at times jokes or insights get lost.

The primary shortcoming of the series, however, is not Norton’s fault. The series is one hour, and edited carefully into two halves. Unfortunately, Vice has decided to publish the first part on Tuesdays and the second several days later. While the cut is seamless, bridged by Norton essentially welcoming us back from a commercial break, having several days’ separation makes the show feel smaller, shorter and harder to retain. Why they’re splitting the episode up is a decision I can’t understand. The best thing for fans to do is to visit the show’s page intermittingly and wait for both parts to be posted before watching.

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