RECAP: 'The Colbert Report' in Philadelpha, 4/17

Thursday evening’s episode marked the end of The Colbert Report’s week in Philadelphia. The show really wrapped the week up nicely and now Pennsylvanians everywhere finally feel prepared to vote next Tuesday the 22nd.

Colbert began the show by checking again with his sidekick Ben Franklin. This time BF (short for Ben Franklin) believes he has invented the toaster, but Colbert has to break the bad news that it has already been invented. “Oh, I’ve wasted my whole life,” Franklin says in disgust. Colbert turns away from Franklin and moves on. Didn’t really get much of a laugh from the audience, but we thought it was funny. Ben Franklin should be on every ‘Colbert Report’ episode! It’s fun to see Colbert play the straight man for once. The duo can do neat little skits, maybe they should take it on the road.

The show is suddenly derailed by technical problems. The huge screen behind Colbert only displays color bars. Show director “Jimmy” is of no help, but here comes Senator Clinton to a thundering applause! She quickly helps Jimmy troubleshoot the screen and informs Colbert that he may need a little makeup. “Senator Clinton, you’re so prepared for any situation,” Colbert exclaimed. “That’s ok Stephen, I just love solving problems,” Clinton replied. “Call me anytime.” Really? “Sure, call me at three AM.” Oh, we get it! They’re referencing that blah blah jfoiewvdvlsms. By the way, that’s all that we’ll see of Clinton tonight.

With the screen repaired, Colbert turns towards Wednesday’s debate at the National Constitution Center Debate which was just ridiculous and embarrassing. We don’t even want to joke about it, it’s so depressing.

Next is an interview with Congressman Patrick Murphy (endorsing Obama), the only member of congress that served in the Iraq war. Given his background, Colbert wisely isn’t in attack mode here, but he’s good enough that he can still get his jokes in. His best question of the week: “How long do you think the troops should stay in Iraq: one hundred years or a thousand years?” Murphy laughs it off and makes his point. Good stuff.

Colbert reports that white males may be the decider in this election. With this said, out walks…John Edwards? And he’s going to do his version of the show’s running segment “The Word”, “Edwords”. We have to say, this is kind of weird. First off, why Edwards? And second, it’s strange to see someone else do “The Word” with the text commentary and all. The whole thing stinks too much of the politician being in on the joke.

And that’s it, ‘The Colbert Report’s week is over…but wait, Obama on the big screen that Clinton fixed! Colbert takes umbrage with Obama calling some of the questions from Wednesday’s debate “manufactured political distractions.” Obama replies, “These distractions won’t help fix our economy, they won’t help people get healthcare, they won’t get us out of Iraq. Stephen, I would go so far as to say, I want to put these political distractions on notice.” The On Notice Board is brought out and luckily Colbert has a card for distractions.

Pretty great ending to a great week of political comedy.