@midnight with Chris Hardwick ending on Comedy Central; our tribute
According to a report from Deadline, the decision to conclude the show was a mutual one between Comedy Central and Hardwick, whose star has only continued to climb since first signing on to do the show. He’s since become the host of The Wall and has more in the works over at NBC. Meanwhile, he also has Talking with Chris Hardwick airing on the weeks where Talking Dead is not around. He’s a busy guy, and we understand that he could want time for other things. Also, this may be one of those shows that is great for a specific era and then ends before it gets tired.
In a statement to the aforementioned site, Hardwick had the following to say about the show ending:
“@midnight has meant the world to me these last four years. It has been a dream to come to work 600 times to make inappropriate jokes about the Internet with my fellow comedian friends. I could not be more proud of this show, staff and crew and at the end of the day, I think we accomplished everything we wanted to accomplish. Spiritually it just feels like it ran its course — I’m not sure we had many more hashtag games in us (which may actually be a relief to anyone whose twitter feed gets overrun every night).
“I owe such a huge debt of gratitude to Comedy Central and [president] Kent [Alterman] for taking a chance on the show, always being great partners and allowing us to exit mutually, which is rarely a gift you are given in this business. I will certainly miss awarding POINTS! to people nightly, so please understand if you see me randomly shouting it at strangers in public after August 4th.”
If we were to list off just a few random things that we’re going to miss about this show, it includes Pierre the Pelican, Matt Mira talking about breadsticks at the Oliver Garden, the Community episode, the coverage around the election, Chuck Tingle, anything related to Ron Funches, executive producer Thomas Lennon almost always losing, getting to see people like Wayne Brady and Drew Carey (our improv comedy idols) come on and be filthy, and anytime that the comedians had to interpret emoji. Consider this a small list.
In general, though, the thing that we’re probably the most grateful for are some of the wonderful comedians that we’ve had a chance to learn more about thanks to the show, including Funches, Moshe Kasher, Hannah Hart, Steve Agee, Kyle Kinane, Grace Helbig, the Sklar Brothers, and so many others. It also gave us another window into people like Nanjiani, Jonah Ray, Rhys Darby, and many others. We have to stop now before we get even more bummed-out that the show is ending.
Overall, though, we have to thank Hardwick, Lennon, and everyone at Comedy Central and Funny or Die for creating this incredible platform for nonsense. There were so many times where this show served as a nice beacon for randomness after a long day. It was the perfect little escape, and even when the world was depressing, there were still points to be handed out.
Farewell, @midnight. We’ll miss you terribly. Until then, though, there are many more points to be handed down over the next couple of weeks. (Photo: Comedy Central.)