Craig Ferguson new king of late night

As the Winter Olympics ended their two-week takeover of NBC, many people didn’t even realize that Jay Leno’s second term as “The Tonight Show” host began on Monday. The one good thing to come from all of these late night battles was that I stayed up, like so many others, to see how they would play out.

To my surprise, the one show that stood out to me wasn’t Jimmy Kimmel, with his hilarious impersonation of Leno, or David Letterman with his poison-tipped barbs at his former adversary. It was Craig Ferguson, the host of “The Late Late Show.”

When I first started watching his show, I noticed that while following the standard late night formula, it was somehow different. After regular viewings, I came to realize that little is actually scripted. Ferguson improvises most of his monologue, which give it a nice narrative quality. Most late night shows sound so rehearsed and scripted that it makes them boring to watch in comparison.

Another unique quality to Ferguson’s show is substance. Most hosts avoid any real conversation with their guests. Ferguson, however, is not afraid to get personal with those he interviews. Often talking about his own history of drugs, alcoholism and rock ‘n’ roll, Ferguson is able to talk about meaningful things all while keeping the mood light with his natural comedic talents.

One of the most amusing aspects of Ferguson’s show is his willingness to explore the strange and experimental. Can you name another host who is willing to dress as Aquaman and read viewers e-mails? How about one who did an entire episode with puppets? When the lights went out unexpectedly in his studio, Ferguson even did an entire episode holding a flashlight to his face.

The most daring and quite frankly most entertaining experiment Ferguson has performed is when he reverted to a predecessor’s format and did an entire show without an audience, without any gags or segments and simply talked the entire time with his guest. The end result was one of the best hours of a talk show I have ever seen.

In my eyes, Craig Ferguson is the new king of late night.