2 out of 5

Hosted by: Craig Ferguson

covers season 1

Entertaining?  Generally.  Effective?  Hardly.

Join or Die is a jokesy feel-smart event masquerading as a political discussion, hosted by fake punker Ferguson, and criticizing him as such probably discredits any punk credit I may have had, but ce la vie.  Several guests are rounded up – one specialist and two sidekicks – and a topic is presented on which must be decided the pinnacle of that offering, e.g. the best invention or the worst campaign or etc.  It’s a valid setup – and Craig frequently amusingly derides the simplicity of taking thirty minutes to weigh in on such big decisions – but it undermines both serious and comic sides of the conversation by never pursuing either one whole-heartedly.  Contrary opinions are ignored, or intelligent but open-ended questions are sniped by a snipe, thus ensuring that the show stay on track to eliminate an option per round, beholden to its structure.  It’s frustrating because Ferguson is a good host – even if his opinions aren’t nearly as anarchic as he might wish and he falls back on fey-voice gags a bit too much, he knows how to move the conversation around and how to rescue the tone if it gets too wayward or heavy – and when the topics aren’t shrug-worthy (best monument?) or clear-cut, it seems to produce some intriguing conversation – but again, its just too wishy-washy to make an impact, and then frequently too unaware of its topics, with only the specialist having any valid facts and Mr. Ferguson coming pre-loaded with info.  And the technology episode was an embarrassment.

This isn’t necessarily an endorsement to not watch, mind you, just acknowledgement that a show that tries to adapt a mentality of “join the conversation” doesn’t do much to advance that.  It fails its m.o. in other words, and the surviving banter isn’t so original as to add excess value.  A distracting watch, but hopefully they can improve on the formula of subsequent seasons are earned.