But I\u2019m pleased to announce, if you haven\u2019t heard already, that the guessing game is over. Comedy Central announced on Monday, at the beginning of a mid-season hiatus for The Daily Show<\/em>, that new contributor Trevor Noah was tapped to fill the show\u2019s starring role.<\/p>\n At first, I honestly wasn\u2019t sure how I felt about this move. In terms of potential candidates for taking over the hosting job on The Daily Show<\/em>, Noah had never even crossed my mind. Sure, he\u2019s been on the show a few times, and sure, he was pretty funny when he was. But he never struck me as true star material. Little did I know that apparently, in his home nation of South Africa, Noah already has quite a reputation as a comedian, and he\u2019s been extending that presence to the United States as well.<\/p>\n Once I recognized that Noah had the chops to do the job, I started to realize what a potentially great move this was by Comedy Central. Not only will they attract so many new fans to The Daily Show<\/em> based on Noah\u2019s already existing stardom, but they\u2019re following the clearly successful model of getting a foreign-born person to commentate on U.S. affairs for a perspective-shifting kind of humor. I say clearly successful because there\u2019s already a model for that, established by another former Daily Show contributor: HBO\u2019s wildly popular Last Week Tonight<\/em> with Englishman John Oliver. If Comedy Central can capitalize on this idea, they could have yet another hit on their hands.<\/p>\n Of course, the decision hasn\u2019t come without controversy. Immediately after the announcement, Noah\u2019s background was subjected to the full scrutiny of the Internet community, and what came out of it wasn\u2019t all good. Noah has come under fire in recent days for certain comments he posted on his Twitter account over the years that some see as insensitive and demeaning toward women and minorities. I won\u2019t bother re-posting them here: enough of that has been done already. If you\u2019re really interested, go to pretty much any major news site.<\/p>\n My take on this whole thing is that it will eventually go away. Everyone\u2019s got a few skeletons in the closet, a few things that maybe they shouldn\u2019t have said, and some stuff that social media doesn\u2019t manage to keep under wraps: I know I\u2019ve made mistakes like this myself many times. Obviously it\u2019s not great that Noah may have posted some questionable jokes (which, in truth, really don\u2019t come across as that funny), but I take them as just tasteless rather than out-and-out offensive. Comedians these days are so often dancing the fine line between humor and insult that things like this are bound to happen. They happened to Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart, too. In any case, Comedy Central is standing firmly behind Noah, and for the time being, so will I. Unless he\u2019s not a good host, of course. In that case, we never had this conversation.<\/p>\n In other casting news, we\u2019ve gotten another exciting update in the CW\u2019s upcoming Flash\/Arrow spin-off: Arthur Darvill, of Doctor Who<\/em> fame, will be joining the main cast. For those of you who aren\u2019t familiar, Darvill is a British actor who spent two and half years by the side of the Eleventh Doctor (Matt Smith) and fellow companion\/wife Amy Pond as they journeyed through time and space in some of the show\u2019s most unforgettable adventures.<\/p>\n And this addition is even bigger than that: not only are we getting a guy who\u2019s a pretty big deal already, but the role he\u2019ll be playing is even bigger. Darvill has been cast as Rip Hunter, the Time Master himself–a character from DC Comic lore I think it\u2019s safe to say that nobody really thought would show up on the CW. But I suppose I shouldn\u2019t be too surprised: since Barry Allen and Harrison Wells have been messing around with time a lot recently in The Flash<\/em>, perhaps the reason Rip shows up at all is to try and fix the damage they could be doing, in keeping with his comic-book role as the guardian of history.<\/p>\n The most interesting part about this, aside from some outlets saying that Hunter will be the central character of the spin-off, is what it means for the future of the CW universe. Firstly, Rip Hunter has been both a hero and a villain in comic books, and portrayed in many different ways over the years. The casting call for this role describes him as a \u201cHan Solo-type rogue\u201d with a swagger and sarcastic attitude, a far cry from the uber-serious character Hunter usually takes in source literature. But I have confidence that Darvill can handle the part in spite of the vast difference between this role and the bumbling yet sincere Rory Williams: having seen him in many other roles besides on Doctor Who<\/em>, including some pretty heavy stuff like Broadchurch<\/em> and live stage shows, I can definitely say he\u2019s got the chops for this part.<\/p>\n Also, there\u2019s the implication that one time-traveler\u2019s arrival could be just the beginning here. Who\u2019s to say that Hunter\u2019s friends and fellow time-traveling heroes the Blue Beetle and Booster Gold, as well as Atom enemy Chronos, won\u2019t be joining the party? Many people were upset when it was announced that it would be Hunter and not Booster in the show, but I don\u2019t think an appearance by Gold should be written off just yet. Then again, the writers do seem to be giving Hunter a lot of the characteristics that Booster was known to have, sort of like combining the two people into one…but who knows? All I can say for now is that a show with Firestorm, Atom, Hawkgirl, Captain Cold, Heat Wave, and Hunter sounds pretty darn cool.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Channel Chaser is written by Kyle Robertson. You can check out more of his work on his\u00a0<\/span>website<\/a>. Check back every Wednesday\u00a0for new articles.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Welcome back to Channel Chaser! If anyone\u2019s been paying attention to the world of television recently, you\u2019ll know that there\u2019s some pretty big stuff coming out in terms of casting for a couple of well-known networks and shows. Both of these items have me very, very excited for a lot of different reasons, so I\u2019ll [Read more…]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[22],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/sharkpuppet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1754"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/sharkpuppet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/sharkpuppet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sharkpuppet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sharkpuppet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1754"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/sharkpuppet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1754\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1756,"href":"http:\/\/sharkpuppet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1754\/revisions\/1756"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/sharkpuppet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1754"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sharkpuppet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1754"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sharkpuppet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1754"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"DailyNoah\"](\"http:\/\/sharkpuppet.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/DailyNoah.jpg\")
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