With this cold open to last night’s “Late Late Show,” Craig Ferguson proves once again that he’s the most underrated talent in late-night television. He manages to poke fun of the NBC late-night disaster while still being self-deprecating and respectful to the hosts of NBC’s late-night shows. Well, except Carson Daly. But who’s gonna respect Carson Daly?

The end result is that he takes an ugly situation that a lot of people are taking too seriously and pulls the humor out of it without coming off as mean-spirited. It’s an impressively well-executed bit. He’s easily America’s #1 Scottish talk show host. No one else even comes close.

If you follow an Angeleno on Twitter, you know that L.A. had some crazy high winds yesterday (up to 70 mph). And it affected Craig Ferguson’s taping of “The Late Late Show” when the winds knocked out power at CBS Television City.

Show publicist Katie Barker says lights started dimming and then suddenly went black about 5:45 p.m. as Ferguson was interviewing actress Alicia Silverstone, leaving both in the dark as to what was going on. Producers decided to keep the blackout as part of the show and handed Ferguson a flashlight. [Variety]

The clip of Silverstone’s interview is below, and the power goes out at the end of the video just before Ferguson goes to commercial. Before that, it’s a whole lot of Ferguson doing an amazing job of making great television out of Silverstone’s boring-ass diet book. He really is a tremendous host, and I’d watch the show more, but… it’s CBS. “NCIS” is the number one TV show in the country. I kind of take that personally.

UPDATE: I added the clip of Ferguson using a flashlight at the end of the show.

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Here’s Rashida Jones on Craig Ferguson from Friday night’s “Late Late Show,” by popular demand.  And by “popular demand” I mean one person talked about it in the comments.  That’s all it takes to get Rashida news around here.  I guess she’s doing publicity for the DVD release of I Love You, Man, but the real news is HELLO LEGS.

Anyway, the full interview is after the jump.  As you surely know if you have the slightest amount of taste, Rashida’s one of those awesome women who is nice to look at and also good at the funny repartée thing.  Dear Hollywood, more Rashida Jones, please.

(Also, as a side note, sorry for anyone who checked back in expecting new posts this weekend — I actually spent most of the weekend volunteering.  And NO, it was NOT court-ordered.  I had the option of serving time.)

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Craig Ferguson is my new prophet.  On last night’s cold open of his show, he stepped out with a rant on why everything sucks.  Basically, in Craig’s opinion, there was a change in marketing in the 1950s and ’60s as companies realized advertisements should target younger people, as they were the best investment to get lifelong brand loyalty.  That notion spread to TV, movies, et cetera, and eventually there became a societal “deification of youth,” which mistakenly became a “deification of imbecility.”

Watch this.  Listen to it.  Transcribe it.  Shout it from the rooftop.  Say no to MTV.  Say no to Transformers.  Turn off the trashy reality shows.  Punch a teenager.  And for God’s sake, when you have kids, don’t let them be stupid.

[Watching TV]

Even though I’m not entirely comfortable hearing a Scottish accent late at night, I definitely approve of Craig Ferguson’s cold openings on “The Late Late Show.”  And just as I liked Ferguson lip-syncing with puppets to Spearhead, so to do I like him doing Britney Spears’s “Oops… I Did It Again.”  Granted, conventional wisdom says that the song is so played-out that even spoofs of it are played out, but that was BEFORE there were shark puppets wearing gold chains involved.

Also, for the record, I feel it’s important to note that I’m getting over my Scottish xenophobia.  Last week, I saw a re-run of Ewan McGregor’s appearance on the show, and it was damn funny.  I’m required to like any host who calls his audience “filthy donkeys” and “bastards.”  It makes me feel like I’m at home.

(Elsewhere in late-night videos: check out Conan’s newest “Tonight Show” web video)