NBC's Night 2 Democratic presidential debate coverage was more chaotic than Night 1

Mediaite

Night 1 will be remembered for NBC News' technical glitches. But without glitches, Night 2 was downright irritating with the lack of control over the candidates. As Mediaite explains in its "Winners and Losers" column, "on the first night, technical glitches and the new format didn’t go over well. And although the network was a partial winner simply for having the first debate, it was arguably a loser performance by the network. Or so we thought, until the chaos of night two took over and made night one look positively well-oiled in comparison. Among the two nights, the microphone issues of day one were less taxing, and less frustrating, than the bickering and interruptions of night two." Mediaite adds: "The cross-talk, the fighting, the bickering, the interrupting … call it what you want, even chaos, but it was not compelling. In fact it was irritating and viewers said so on Twitter, a lot. The lack of control — and we mean by the moderators as well as self-control from the candidates — was off-putting and a big fail. One can blame the quantity of people, but only if one forgets that there were just as many people on the first night and this didn’t happen. Not a good look for anyone, or a good time for the people watching."

ALSO:

• Isn’t it time for NBC to get a less peppy debate tune?: "Sure, it’s a minor matter—an aesthetic detail of short duration," says Heather Souvaine Horn. "Still. It’d be nice, particularly this year, if NBC would ditch its usual fanfare for something a little more understated. The Olympics-meets-Indiana Jones intro soundtrack feels too flashy, too entertainment-oriented for the present moment—more suited to something people watch with popcorn and a beer, rather than a knitted brow and a bottle of Xanax."
• Kamala Harris seemed taken aback when Chris Matthews asked her after the debate: How do you not have a “hatred for all white people?”
• Andrew Yang accuses NBC of cutting off his mic
• Cecily Strong or Heidi Gardner: Who should play Marianne Williamson on SNL?
• UPDATE: Kate McKinnon has already debuted her Marianne Williamson impression on Late Night with Seth Meyers