Bill Maher's New Rules, April 25, 2008

It's another weekend, and another good crop of New Rules from HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher. Sadly, it is the last batch for a while. It's the "season finale," and the show will not return until late August. Here is my humble suggestion to both HBO and Bill Maher:

New Rule: Stop treating this show like The Sopranos or Sex and the City. This is not a scripted show that works well in "seasons." This is a show that has a devoted following, one that would have more opportunity to grow if it did not go off the air for four months at a time. Why not run three or four new episodes, and run a rerun or two, and then three or four new episodes? Continuously. Honestly, if The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, or The Colbert Report had these kinds of "seasons," they wouldn't have ever burst out of "cult" status into the mainstream.

I will give Real Time credit, it does always seem to return right when the news is exploding. But they miss so much with these four-month hiatuses. Hiati? Haiti? Nevermind. . .