This post made me think about Craig Ferguson even before your parenthetical correctly pointed out that he took some of the tendencies of Dave’s shows to an admirable (though not always /funny/) extreme. Sometimes an entire “Late Late Show” w/ Craig—-including conversations with his guests—-was a long skein of in-jokes. Or not even fully formed “jokes,” just a series of callbacks and half-assed impersonations and references whose charm came through maniacal repetition and minimal variation. The format of Ferguson’s show changed about as little as a network show that lasts a decade can change, and for a younger guy (well, younger than Dave) he seemed especially averse to the sort of standalone elements that make viral hits. If anything, the show moved /away/ from YouTube-ready skits in favor of aimless bullshitting between Craig and his robot sidekick.

Also, in re. “sincere pleasure in the mundane,” here’s the funniest thing I’ve read from the recent blogs and articles about Dave’s retirement:

“I think George was responsible for maybe the single most brilliant idea on the show ever. It was a contest between a humidifier and a dehumidifier. And at the start of the show they would be switched on simultaneously, and at the end of the show we would see which of the machines had done its designed task more productively. As I recall, the problem was that the noise made by these machines just ruined the audio for the rest of the show.” (http://www.vulture.com/2015/05/23-lost-laughs-of-letterman.html)