quotas, and the movie can’t even
decide whether being a woman of
color is a hindrance or an advan-
tage in the workplace. In a stand-
up routine, Patel jokes about how
being a woman of color makes her
“unfireable”, but this scene comes
immediately after we’ve seen her
fired by Newbury!!!
It often feels as though the
script, penned by Kaling her-
self, was written by two writers
of tech firms would struggle to
afford. I’ll say one thing for Late
Night - it’s consistent in its incon-
sistency.
Even if Late Night could get a
grip on its theme (it doesn’t), and
even if it were funny (it’s not), it
would still suffer from a central
narrative that’s difficult to get
behind. Newbury prides herself
on having intelligent discussions
with guests from the world of
It often feels as though the script,
penned by Kaling herself, was written by two writers
who didn’t have access to each other’s notes.
who didn’t have access to each
other’s notes. The movie opens
with Newbury collecting the lat-
est of many comedy awards, only
to then tell us that her career is on
the rocks! It’s implied that Patel is
struggling financially, but as is so
often the case in American main-
stream comedies, she lives in the
sort of New York duplex CEOs
NJ STAGE - ISSUE 59
politics and journalism, but in or-
der to boost ratings and save her
job, Patel goads her into dumb-
ing down her show, interviewing
YouTube ‘celebs’ and engaging in
silly skits. At the same time, New-
bury refuses to make jokes about
political subjects. What? It’s 2019;
that’s literally all late night talk
shows do now.
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