Then there’s Mr. Noah’s boundary-pushing, which earlier landed him in controversy over old jokes on Twitter. On Monday night, he delivered a couple that might have made Mr. Stewart wince — one playing on a pun of “aides” and “AIDS,” another in which he pretended to be crack cocaine boasting to crystal meth, “I took down Whitney Houston!”
Neither joke was worth the cringe. But fine: It’s by exploring his differences — and sometimes by getting in trouble or disappointing Mr. Stewart’s loyalists — that Mr. Noah will need to find his own “Daily Show” voice.
However much you loved Mr. Stewart, the show could use that. If I may allow myself a brief apostasy: Mr. Stewart’s “Daily Show” was a landmark, but in its later few years, it had become too good at giving fans what they expected — thorough, well-researched pastings of Republicans and Fox News, over and over.
If Mr. Noah wants to do what revolutionary product launches do, he’ll eventually give his audience less of what it wants, and more of what it doesn’t yet know it needs.
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