11 PM is darn late for me to be up to be amused by anything. Of course, the flip side is that, if I am in the mood for amusement, it's really easy to keep me amused because I'm so tired.
Patrick Bristow did a solidly good job as host. He was expressive, funny, and showed good concentration/poise when being shouted at by the audience. He also had a good sense of when to stop a scene. (Editorial aside: his bio includes the comment about the "accidental comedy Showgirls." That gives him 5 extra credit points right there.)
The puppeteers are obviously masters at their craft - expressing emotion and feeling through physical movement. The use of distance and close-ups to and from the camera (whatever that technical term is) was one of the consistently good parts of the puppeteering. My favorite puppets-in-action were the ferret-thing and the valley-girl alien. The suicidal turtle was disturbingly well done. The hotdogs weren't worth the time.
I was particularly amused by the sequence translating How Babies are Made, the newscast on Raining Cats, and the closing opera about fake breasts. Sigfried and Roy's Secret Garden had some great moments in it, as did the police report about George Michael "having faith" in the handicap stall.
All in all, I think it was worth staying up to see, and I hope to be able to catch next week's show. Yes, we could copy it for later, but there is something satisfying about seeing it "live."
