Stephen Colbert has been saying goodbye to his Late Show audience since CBS executives announced the end of its “historic run” almost a year ago. He’s hardly the first late-night talk show host to experience disrespect from his (and it’s…always a “his”) network’s executives. David Letterman originated the Late Show franchise at CBS after NBC executives chose frequent guest host Jay Leno to succeed Johnny Carson as host of the flagship Tonight Show. Conan O’Brien launched his own talk show at TBS after NBC programmers tried to push his Tonight Show past midnight to make room for Leno in the time slot viewers were used to seeing him, a mess Letterman blamed on NBC’s “pinheads,” “nitwits,” and “mouth-breathers.” More recent insults: current Tonight Show host Jimmy Fallon was cut back from five episodes per week to four, and current Late Night host Seth Meyers lost his live band due to budget cuts.
But back to this week’s late-night victim: after months of death throes, The Late Show With Stephen Colbert is no more.
The difference between The Late Show’s cancellation and earlier late-night shuffles is, of course, the political environment. Senator Adam Schiff of California was Colbert’s guest the night Colbert announced the news, after which Schiff and his fellow senator Elizabeth Warren raised questions about whether the decision was a consequence of Colbert’s jokes about the presidential administration (specifically, his description of CBS’s settlement of Donald Trump’s lawsuit against the network as a “big fat bribe” just two days before the cancellation). But even though Colbert has more cause than most to go out angry, he didn’t—and surely no one who’s watched him hosting The Late Show over the past 11 years could have possibly expected him to.
The run up to the end has featured the expected bumper crop of very special guests: Steven Spielberg, David Byrne, Tom Hanks, and Bruce Springsteen. Though Barack Obama is a pretty big draw in his way (I don’t listen to his podcast but I assume people like it), Colbert has been campaigning for weeks to book “Chicago” Pope Leo XIV as the guest on his final episode. Several celebrities showed up in the audience to pitch themselves, but Bryan Cranston, Paul Rudd, Tim Meadows, Tig Notaro, and Ryan Reynolds were all denied before audiences saw an arm emerge from Pope Leo’s dressing room and heard a voice refusing to go on due to the poor quality of his hot dog. Paul McCartney then wandered onto the stage offering to fill in; it would have been a fanfare-free appearance even if Deadline hadn’t spoiled it during the show’s taping hours earlier. If Pope Leo was watching, he has to have regretted not making time for the show if only to save us all from McCartney’s comedy about updating the software on his phone.
A runner about the screen behind Colbert’s desk malfunctioning finally paid out after its third (what else) glitch, cutting to a filmed bit where Colbert is confronted by a wormhole backstage. Neil DeGrasse Tyson, Jon Stewart (again), Andy Cohen, and Colbert’s Strike Force Five co-hosts (……again) all show up to muse about how Colbert should not ignore the hole but choose how he wants to walk through it, and whether the hole is also a threat to all the other late-night hosts’ shows. Inevitably, Colbert is sucked into a void, where he finds Elvis Costello and his past and final bandleaders, Jon Baptiste and Louis Cato, and the four perform a relaxed cover of Costello’s old demo “Jump Up.” Then, just when I was marvelling that they booked Paul McCartney just to talk, Paul joined the supergroup from the void for “Hello Goodbye.”