The high point of Surfergirl's week.

OK, I know y'all will say it's the drugs, but seriously—objectively!—this was the best Late Late Show so far. First of all, the opening theme is even better than I realized: a kind of reckless challenge to the nocturnal viewer ("It's hard to stay up/ It's been a long, long day … /But hang on, leave the TV on, and let's do it anyway") that ends with a near-Shakespearean affirmation of nihilism: "Tomorrow's just a future yesterday." Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow … an endless succession of future Late Late Shows with Craig Ferguson, until the last syllable of recorded time. Out, out, brief candle!

Monologue: Still sucks. I've figured out why Fergie's standup jokes never work: because he has no self-deprecating backup schtick, no "that joke didn't work, did it?" patter. Everyone has some version of this: Carson had it, Leno and Letterman have it, O'Brien's comedy is essentially made up of nothing else. But just now, Fergs told a weak joke, got no laugh, and repeated it. Just flat-out retold the joke, as if he were explaining it to a child. Cue sound of wind whooshing through studio.

Commercial: I feel perfectly normal, but I guess I must be a little high, because when the announcer in a commercial for a line of cruise ships says that the price of a cruise "includes air," I find myself thinking, of course it includes air! How could a cruise ship deny air to its passengers? Then I realize: Oh, they mean airfare.

Comedy Bits: He just did it! Scored his first out-and-out laugh of the week! Unscripted, of course—if you left it to these writers, no one would ever crack a smile. During a dull new feature called "A Cup of Tea and a Chat," in which the host takes questions from the audience while enjoying tea and scones at his desk, Fergie—for reasons too involved to explain here—suddenly felt inspired to improvise a bit of physical business wherein the teapot became a runaway car, zooming across his desk. It was a sweet, childlike, and completely spontaneous bit of play, utterly unlike the forced merriment of the rest of the show, and the studio audience (and I) cracked up out of sheer surprise. The rest of the comedy bits: excruciating, as usual.

Guests: Jeremy Piven, who plays the amped-up agent on HBO's Entourage, is a dream talk-show guest: funny, quick on his feet, and well-prepared for his interview (unlike Craig Ferguson, who, on hearing that Piven was starring in a Neil LaBute play called Fat Pig, asked, "Is there a pig in it?"). There's one moment between them that makes the whole week of watching worthwhile. When Fergs asks Piven if he has a girlfriend, Pivs responds, "I do not, but the night is young, and I'm a straight man, but I do find you attractive. Is that awkward?" The audience squeals in delight, and the two men proceed to lock eyes and flirt for the next full minute. And it's not that fake-awkward straight-guy kind of flirting that makes shows like Friends so unwatchable—it's a daring tease, a tongue-in-cheek but brazen come-on that only resolves when Piven all but offers himself up for an end-of-show encounter: "It's the end of your first week, I thought you could go out with a bang." Snap! Way to make the frat-boy demographic squirm!

The second guest, Harvard anthropology professor Frank Marlowe, is so electrifying I could listen to him all night. He studies a group of tribes on the Andaman Islands in the Indian Ocean, some of whom are the only known people on earth to remain completely uncontacted by outsiders. (Apparently most of the Andaman Islands population survived the tsunami by fleeing to high ground, but because of their isolation, it's difficult to know.) They're hunter-gatherers with Stone Age-era technology and no agriculture who shoot at intruders with bows and arrows (including a National Geographic photographer who was wounded 20 years ago trying to snap a picture). It's fascinating stuff, but Fergs is asking the worst questions—dumb gags about whether the tribes should be paying taxes, etc. The almost-majored-in-anthro nerd in me goes wild, and I'm literally yelling at the television screen: "Ask about their language! What kind of tools do they use?" Thank God I'm home alone.

Commercial: What's this "Oveglove" that's suddenly all over late-night TV? Some kind of thermal heatproof glove you wear while changing lightbulbs around the house? I'm no marketing expert, but it's not clear how this product is creating a niche for itself beyond the regular oven mitt.

Musical Guest: After being bumped from the show on Monday (see below), G. Love is back, picking an electric guitar as he sings a bluesy hip-hop song called "Booty Call." It's catchy, but I can't stop free-associating on his name. G. Love. Glove. Oveglove! It all makes sense.

And so ends my journey of discovery with Craig Ferguson. I may catch the show from time to time, but we'll never be this close again. I'll miss his sad, Scottish roué face, the poignant wave as he says, "Goodnight, everybody." He reads a list of guests for next week: John Goodman, William H. Macy, Patricia Arquette. Great. At the end of my week in the trenches, now he starts to attract the A-list.

Friday, Jan. 7, 2005