With Conan O'Brien's move to the Tonight Show, Ferguson is officially the best 12:30 host on TV, in a landslide, over Jimmy Fallon. Which admittedly isn't saying much. But truth be told, Ferguson was even holding his own with Conan over the past few years, ratings be damned. Now, I'm not a huge fan of his sketch segments, which are often more self-indulgently silly than anything else, but everything else about Craig's LLS is absolute talk-show perfection. The extra-long monologues alone are worth tuning in for, as they're typically side-splitting -- and mostly improvised -- treks through the inner workings of Ferguson's brain (a brain that once cooked up an onstage persona known as "Bing Hitler", so you know it's going to the height of absurdism). Ferguson also has amazing chemistry with his guests, usually going so far as to tear up the question cards before each interview, just to show that he's going to have an actual conversation with them instead of a boring, scripted shill-fest. You must be on your toes in an interview with Ferguson, because very little is off-limits for comic material... Yet the difference between Craig and Dave Letterman of the 1980s is that none of Ferguson's act is mean-spirited -- he's so charismatic and talented that he's able to get away with just about anything and still garner laughs. Whether he's opening the show with singing puppets or sipping from his over-sized, snake-shaped coffee mug, Ferguson has developed a unique, often hysterical brand of late night entertainment despite working on a shoestring budget in relative obscurity. Jimmy Fallon has all of the resources of Conan's old show (plus The Roots) at his disposal, yet he gets fewer laughs in an entire episode than Ferguson does in a given 5-minute span. The man is just that gifted. Now let's hope CBS has the good sense to promote him to 11:30 when Letterman finally decides to ride off into the sunset around 2012 or so...
