I really miss callers interacting with the Wurster calls.
Correct me if I'm wrong (and I'm sure someone will), but I remember hearing an interview with Tom and Jon (on Sound of Young America, I think), and they said something to the effect of, they stopped doing this because it always had the potential to derail the "bit". And on some of the early shows, it does happen now and then; one bad caller can take the wind out of their sails a bit.
That makes a ton of sense. It's kind of the same theory as to how a lot of stand-ups deal with hecklers -- if you give them the power as to how the direction of the set is going, you run the risk of not being able to bring it back. But if you can reel it back in after having it nearly spin off-the-rails -- I think that's the absolute best thing to see in comedy.
The Zachary call came close to derailing when the irate guy called in and said he was actually in a barbershop band. Thankfully, Zachary's pompous attitude about giving barbershop a badly needed enema was insulting enough to have the guy get flustered as opposed to quiz him on arcane barbershop factoids.
I'd be curious to see how interactions w/ one of Jon's calls would work now. There's enough people who completely understand the concept of buying into a bit (like the Wally/Fredericks stuff from a few weeks back) that there could be some good material. Of course, there are also a few people every show who try to be too-cool-for-school who would just try and ruin it.
The "hold" stuff is absolutely brilliant. It's so condescending. A lot of the calls remind me of pro wrestling bits. They go deeper than Jon playing a character and Tom being the straight-man. A lot of Jon's characters are essentially jerks who you'd like to see get some kind of comeuppance, with the payoff a lot of times being the character threatening Tom's life before hanging up. It's like when the wrestling heel starts crap with the hero/face, gets humiliated somehow and cowardly leaves but not before fulfilling some bizarre need to get the very last word in.
The best thing in the Zachary call was when they finally got a caller to sing a duet. I could just picture how giddy they must have been when someone bought in to what they were going for.
This is one of my favorite things ever recorded, BTW. I laughed non-stop.
