Cultelevision: Night Stand

I would bet money that most of the readers of this website have never heard of the long-departed television show Night Stand. From 1995 until 1997, this hidden gem starred veteran actor and comedian Timothy Stack, of the famous LA improvisational group The Groundlings, as a television talk show host called Dick Dietrick. Night Stand, as the show often told us, was one of the few programs unafraid to take on such issues as illegal aliens, teenage prostitution, and plastic surgery.

Of course, since this show was merely a spoof of actual talk shows, the guests managed to be more outrageous than your average episode of Jerry Springer, yet also more believable than any of Jerry’s guests. Some of the more notable actors who played guests include Hal Sparks, of the US version of Queer as Folk, Brady Bunch mother Florence Henderson, Jerry Springer as himself, and fellow Groundlings Phil Hartman, Lynne Stewart (Ms. Yvonne from Pee Wee’s Playhouse), and John Paragon (Jambi the Genie from Pee Wee’s Playhouse).

Despite all the talented players around him, the star of Night Stand was the hilarious Timothy Stack’s clueless talk show host Dick Dietrich. He’d introduce these insane guests and crazy show premises, blunder through some of the dumbest questions ever written to deliberately antagonize the guests, and when the over-the-top sexual innuendo drew the inevitable audience response, he’d cluelessly turn to the hooting and hollering folks behind him, have a sudden moment of clarity, and begin admonishing the audience with a vigorous, “No! No, people, please! No!”

This was, without a doubt, one of the most pleasingly offensive programs to ever make it to network airwaves in the United States (and also, apparently Sweden, though I don’t know if it made it to the UK). White supremacists and black supremacists were skewered with the same vigour. The religious and the anti-religious also received their comeuppance. The smart and the dumb also got theirs. Toss in some skewering of feminists, skewering of chauvinists, and skewering of talk show viewers in general, and there was no special interest group in the world who didn’t get their nose tweaked by this fearless program. If you had a pulse and ever watched the show, you might have been offended by its content (if you lack a sense of humour, which I suspect is pretty much everyone with a cause).

Like most people, I caught this show in reruns on cable, and after a year of broadcasting, it has disappeared. No DVDs are forthcoming, either, which is sad because it’s one of the most brilliant send-ups of the TV talk show format ever, and remains just as poignant now as it ever was then as television standards have managed to sink even lower in the intervening decade.

There are a few streaming episodes available online, and I recommend everyone seek it out. If you’ve ever watched any daytime talk program, you’ll like this show. If you’re a talk show junkie like I am (I’ll watch anything with slutty teenagers being sent to boot camps and paternity tests), then you’ll LOVE this show. If you’re a polygamist white supremacist who is in love with a black supremacist involved in a castration cult, however, you might not be such a big fan.

Ron Hogan will one day be a chair-throwing guest on Jerry Springer, once he finds out his married girlfriend is cheating on him with a farm animal. Find more by Ron at his blog, Subtle Bluntness. Plus find him daily at Shaktronics and the Flektor Development Blog.