Strike Force Five

With all the things I have to occupy my time like movies, TV shows, reading (books, comics, news articles, blogs etc) not to mention earning a goddamn living and dealing with life stuff (grocery shopping and other errands as they arise) and NAPS (Oh my God! I live for NAPS!) and more, I surely do not have time to add a podcast to my itinerary.

Not really, I don't but I make time for this one: Strike Force Five. 

Strike Force Five features talk show hosts Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel, Seth Meyers and John Oliver.  This podcast was created to support the five hosts' employees who are out of work due to the 2023 Writers Guild of America strike.

The five guys riff on any number of topics such as what they are up to during the strike (Colbert is learning to tap dance) and personal stuff they've missed talking about on their own shows (such as Kimmel's "almost" vasectomy) along with some funny war stories from their histories as performers. 

What has not come up so far has been the recent controversy arising out of the Rolling Stone article about the hellscape that is Jimmy Fallon's Tonight Show.  It appears the gang recorded several of these podcasts in advance of that story breaking.  

Some reviewers have been less that effusive in their praise of this series citing "the unscripted nature of the podcast sometimes leads to unfocused discussions" or that "the quality of the podcast is inconsistent".  

Which I think is actually the point.  While Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel, Seth Meyers and John Oliver are by varying degrees genuinely funny people and have some really funny anecdotes to tell, the unscripted podcasts also underscores the idea of how much better the performances of these comic actors would be with the benefit of scripts written by professional writers.  

Strike Force Five is no more than it's design to be, a loose confederation of talented talk show hosts coming together to chat about whatever pops in their head. If it was any better than that, one might argue who needs writers?  

I hope that Strike Force Five is soon not needed any more and the Writer's Guild can get a fair and equitable deal from the producers and studios. I need my Seth Meyers/Closer Look fix.