The responsibility of informing the public shouldn't have fallen to comedians, but, if it had, it was surely more an indictment of the traditional news media than it was evidence of superficial young people or self-important comedians.
For the show's cold open segment, Fallon pretended to have eaten way too much turkey — and it fell to comedian Jerry Seinfeld to save the day and perform his opening monologue.
China is aghast at the apparent targeting of an Asian physician, all the major networks are covering the story, the stock price has fallen, and every comedian worth his or her salt has weighed in with jokes.
Eventually, though, the comedian fell out with his writers and thought he could do better.
And a third, more complicated story insists that a comedian fell on top of it during a birthday party that Gillespie gave for his wife, Lorraine.
As they fell behind, the comedian and writer David Schneider observed on Twitter that "the only way North Korea can win this now is to go nuclear".
There's another first too – never before has there been a 20-year-old nominee who falls somewhere between comedian, songwriter, poet and literary critic, or whose most obvious influence is Eminem.
Most notably, Oliver, who, in interviews, repeatedly emphasizes the debt that he owes to Stewart, shares Stewart's basic tonal template: aggrieved by the necessity of the task at hand, as if to remind the audience that, in a better world, it wouldn't fall to a comedian to straighten out all these serious issues for us.
And then there's more Rohrshach, leaning in to intimidate someone, and then the Comedian falling out the window, tumb ling helplessly through the air and blood falling onto that smiley face badge again.
