Stephen Colbert, seen on his set in New York on May 6, hosted his final episode Thursday night.Scott Kowalchyk/The Associated Press
Ed Sullivan. Samantha Bee. Arsenio Hall. Johnny Carson. Chelsea Handler. Trevor Noah. Jay Leno. Joan Rivers. Robin Thede. Dick Cavett. Jack Paar. Steve Allen.
The Late Show with Stephen Colbert’s final episode opened with an introduction cobbled together from clips of these and other past and present American television late-night and variety show hosts dating back three quarters of a century.
In what was also the series finale for CBS’s The Late Show franchise altogether (RIP: 1993-2026), Stephen Colbert humbly positioned himself as just another host in what was dubbed “the comedy-variety-talk continuum.”
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Though Colbert promised his audience a regular Thursday episode full of joy to end things off, the dominant emotion of his departing show was melancholy – and the style slowly drifted into sci-fi.
President Donald Trump was not mentioned by name, but the authoritarian-style pressure he had put on CBS to cancel Colbert hung over the proceedings. (The network has insisted The Late Show’s death was purely a financial decision.)
Fans lined up in the rain outside the Ed Sullivan Theater in New York on Thursday ahead of the final episode of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.
The Associated Press
Colbert, 62, whose previous hosting gig was on Comedy Central’s The Colbert Report from 2005 to 2014, recalled how on the first episode of that show, his arch-conservative alter-ego had said: “Anyone can read the news to you. I promise to feel the news at you.”
His job at The Late Show was different, Colbert said he had quickly discovered: “We were here to feel the news with you. And I don’t know about you, but I sure have felt it.”
For the first half of the show, Colbert followed the familiar structure – a topical monologue, a desk bit, then a multipart interview with his surprise final guest, Paul McCartney.
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The 83-year-old singer-songwriter’s first band, The Beatles, had made its American debut on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1964 in the very studio that has been home to The Late Show since 1993.
“America’s where all the music we loved came from,” McCartney recalled of his first visit to the United States.
“The land of the free, the greatest democracy: That is what it was. Still is, hopefully.”
Paul McCartney was a surprise guest on Thursday's finale.John Lamparski/Getty Images
This is where the pretense that The Late Show was just a standard episode ended. Feigning technical difficulties, Colbert wandered backstage and (in a prerecorded segment) discovered a glowing green wormhole.
Popular scientist Neil deGrasse Tyson appeared to explain it had opened up due to a rift “in the comedy-variety talk continuum” caused by CBS cancelling The Late Show despite it being No. 1 in the ratings.
The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart, Colbert’s mentor, then appeared to dig deeper into the hole as a metaphor – the latest dark matter that Colbert would have to choose to face with laughter.
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Next, Colbert’s fellow late-night hosts Jimmy Kimmel, Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers, plus HBO satirist John Oliver, showed up to look into the hole. “At some point this may come for all of our shows,” Oliver said.
Soon after, Colbert was sucked into the wormhole and found himself in a void-like theatre with a ghost light singing an Elvis Costello song called Jump Up; Costello was there, too, as were Jon Batiste and Louis Cato, Colbert’s band leaders past and present.
Jump up, hold on tight
Can’t trust a promise or a guarantee
‘Cause the man ‘round the curve says that he’s never heard of you or me.
A television monitor inside the Ed Sullivan Theater shows the last episode of Stephen Colbert’s Late Show.Adam Gray/Reuters
Back in the Ed Sullivan Theater, McCartney and Colbert sang Hello, Goodbye with The Late Show’s staff and crew in what become a joyful flash mob.
But then there was more prerecorded business: McCartney flipped a giant off switch; the Ed Sullivan Theater was sucked into the sky; it fell back down to Earth, enclosed in a snow globe; Colbert’s dog, Benny, sniffed it.
This was a lot of endings. But, to be fair, it’s hard to say goodbye – and Colbert has had to do so for eight months now.
While Trump’s war on late night is disturbingly anti-democratic, he has also given an extra wind of relevance to the aging format.
Last May, streaming television viewing in the United States surpassed what we now call linear television – broadcast and cable, combined – for the first time, according to the ratings tracker Nielsen.
The concept of a “late-night show” is increasingly an anachronism in this on-demand environment.
If daily programs like The Late Show are still on the other American networks in another decade, it will be a surprise.
They weren’t always there. Immediately before The Late Show with David Letterman was launched in 1993, CBS’s 11:35 p.m. ET slot was filled with by Crimetime After Primetime – where low-cost imported Canadian dramas such as Forever Knight and Fly by Night aired.
Now, CBS affiliates in the United States will fill that space with a non-topical comedy panel show called Comics Unleashed with Byron Allen.
Global TV, which has carried Colbert in Canada for its 11-year run, will air reruns of its original true-crime series Crime Beat Monday to Friday.
The Ed Sullivan Theater, meanwhile, has not disappeared into a snow globe.
The landmark 99-year-old building at 1697 Broadway in Manhattan was first built as a live theatre, then became a music hall and a CBS radio sound stage before being used for television, mostly, since 1948.
Some wonder if it might become a Broadway theatre again.
As Colbert seemed to want to convey in his broadcast, he was just a blip on a stage trod on not only by Letterman and The Beatles before him, but Cary Grant, Jackie Gleason, Nichols and May, Kate and Allie ...
The arc of the American entertainment universe is long; it’s unclear where it is bending.