Strike Force Five Rides Again!: the Sequel

We return with another of the better episodes for the Strike Force Five podcast – which is saying a lot because I thought all 12 episodes were wonderful, at times hilarious.

As I mentioned before, during the Writers Guild strike, the five hosts of talk shows – Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel, Seth Meyers and John Oliver – teamed up to do a weekly podcast.  The point was to raise money for the staff. 

This is Episode 7, and they make a slight change for it, inviting a guest to participate.  And that guest is Jon Stewart.  And he’s terrifically funny here…as are they all.  Last week, I posted one of the rare and short videos they've posted from the podcast.  It was wonderful -- and this is that on steroids.

What stands out from the podcasts is how much the hosts seem to truly like and respect the others – though being comedians have no trouble ridiculing the others, at times mercilessly, including relentlessly bringing up past derision from previous weeks, not letting foolish misdeeds be forgotten.

A few things to mention so that when they’re brought up in the episode, they make sense.

One is that in an earlier show, Jimmy Fallon talked about bringing food to bed, something the others found outlandish and relentlessly ridiculed him about it.  It became a common joke on the series, and it’s brought up here again.  

Another is that they also bring up again (as they did often) the truly horrible -- yet wildly funny – episode that Fallon hosted, when he tried to make his turn a Newlywed Game-type event, but it went very, very, very...very... hilariously wrong.  (f you missed it, it's posted here.)

Third is that Ryan Reynolds is one of the few sponsors for the podcast (to help raise money) and does truly funny ads for his companies Mint Mobile and Aviator Gin. 

And finally, for the first podcast Jimmy Kimmel found an explosion sound that he would play every time the show’s name got mentioned.  He continued this for several shows until it became a matter of debate.  Some of the hosts absolutely hated it, the others preferred it in moderation.

I can’t embed the podcast, which was done for Spotify, but here’s a link to the episode on the Strike Force Five website.