Smugness, sanctimony and Stephen Colbert – sayonara at last!
Finally – finally – after a nearly year-long goodbye in which this failed late-night talk show host transformed his low ratings and CBS’ multimillion dollar losses into political martyrdom, we are rid of him.
But not before an endless stream of exit interviews with the likes of People magazine, the Hollywood Reporter, Entertainment Tonight, Architectural Digest and anyone, it seems, who asked.
‘I’ll never stop caring about my country,’ Colbert bloviated to People. ‘I’m a perfectly fine fan of me’ – how humble, how endearing – ‘but I am not of the opinion that if my voice is missing from the national conversation, the republic will turn awry.’
We’ll see about that. Not the republic part – the Colbert part. If the past year of self-tribute is anything to go by, does anyone really believe Colbert thinks we’ll all be just fine without his voice?
To suffer through his final episode, which aired Thursday night, the answer is a resounding no.
Smugness, sanctimony and Stephen Colbert – sayonara at last!
After a nearly year-long goodbye in which this failed late-night talk show host transformed his low ratings and CBS’ multimillion dollar losses into political martyrdom, we are rid of him
Just take a look at the show’s YouTube summary of Colbert’s final monologue.
It reads, in part:
‘Stephen Colbert thought it would be best to begin his series finale with a regular monologue focused on the national conversation, free from forced celebrity cameos.’
You know – keeping his last show fun. Light. Free from politics and celebrities, except for the gaggle stashed in the audience.
This bit was a direct rip-off of Saturday Night Live’s go-to opening: When they have a host who struggles with a monologue, SNL historically seeds the studio audience with celebrities, who ask scripted questions to that well-prepared host.
The key difference here: SNL tries to stack the crowd with likeable celebrities.
So why on earth would Colbert allow Ryan Reynolds, whose reputation has been destroyed by colluding with his equally odious (just my opinion) wife, Blake Lively, in the attempted destruction of Justin Baldoni’s career?
Reynolds, who has bragged that, as a child, he burned down a wing of his elementary school in Canada?
Reynolds, who crowed in his Deadpool & Wolverine commentary that he made his 7-year-old daughter, Inez – who played Kidpool in the movie – say the line, ‘Hey, when I want your opinion, I’ll take Wolverine’s d**k out of your mouth’?
Why on earth would Colbert allow Ryan Reynolds, whose reputation has been destroyed by colluding with his equally odious (just my opinion) wife, Blake Lively, in the attempted destruction of Justin Baldoni’s career?
‘I’ll never stop caring about my country,’ Colbert bloviated to People
Even though, as Reynolds admitted in the commentary, Inez had begged him not to make her say it. And so, Reynolds continued, he and the director made her say some version of that line, somewhere between seventy and five hundred times.
Yes: Stephen Colbert, moral arbiter and anti-Trump scold supreme, chose someone as vile as Reynolds – again, my opinion – to send him off.
The show itself felt bloated, stiff and anticlimactic. Not since Colbert radically politicized his show – first in reaction to Trump, then COVID, then Trump, again – has his brand of comedy fallen so flat.
After months of teasing who Colbert’s last guests would be – Barack Obama? George Clooney? The Pope? His wife Evie, who he humiliated in a podcast last week by bragging about all the female celebrity guests he lusted after? – we got only one.
Paul McCartney.
A legend? Unquestionably.
But the first person we think of as reflective of our current moment? Hardly.
Same with the other celebrity cameos, who I think of as Duds of a Certain Age: Bryan Cranston, Tim Meadows, Paul Rudd, Tig Notaro.
Hardly the roster of A-listers who bade Johnny Carson farewell in May 1992, after thirty years on the air.
Paul McCartney. A legend? Unquestionably. But the first person we think of as reflective of our current moment?
Same with the other celebrity cameos, who I think of as Duds of a Certain Age: Bryan Cranston (above), Tim Meadows, Paul Rudd, Tig Notaro
Carson’s last week saw Clint Eastwood, then one of America’s biggest movie stars; David Letterman, Carson’s chosen successor and protégé; Robin Williams, one of the world’s most popular stand-up comics; and Bette Midler, the one-woman powerhouse who created an indelible moment by serenading Carson with ‘One for My Baby (and One More for the Road)’.
And Carson’s final episode was stacked not with celebrities but a hand-selected audience of family, friends and crew members.
A sample of the sparkling conversation between McCartney, 83, and Colbert, 62, on this finalé.
McCartney: ‘I like things to stay the same’ – subtle – ‘because I learned how to do them, and then somebody changes it. Like the iPhone! I know how to do it, and then all of a sudden it says, Update! I say, I don’t want to update! I bought you. I don’t want you to change.
Colbert: Wow.
McCartney: But it changes.
Colbert: It does happen a lot.
McCartney: Yeah.
Colbert: What do you do? Nothing to be done about it.
Surely, this can’t be how Colbert envisioned his final show. Where was Barack, exactly? Or Michelle, even? The Clintons? A Kennedy?
It seems Colbert, who fancies himself a MAGA martyr, couldn’t even attract a fading Dem statesman for his final bow.
That said, Barack did post on Instagram – the modern equivalent of sending over a fruit basket.
‘For more than a decade, Stephen Colbert has been one of the top voices of late night — making us laugh and, even more importantly, reminding us who we are and what America stands for,’ he wrote.
‘What America stands for’? What is Barack Obama even talking about here?
‘For more than a decade, Stephen Colbert has been one of the top voices of late night — making us laugh and, even more importantly, reminding us who we are and what America stands for,’ Obama wrote
Colbert is all too happy to play along, telling People that despite his show’s cancellation – it cost CBS $100 million to produce and lost more than $40 million annually – he doesn’t have ‘any fear’ of what Trump or his administration might do to him.
(Spoiler alert: Nothing. Trump is going to do nothing.)
Yet Colbert has hit on a strategy that feeds his ego while convincing a certain segment of the population that, despite all signs to the contrary – and cancellation is a huge one – he is still very culturally relevant.
‘The ending of our show aside,’ Colbert said, ‘which people can speculate about all they want, and I can’t argue with their speculations’ – code for: KEEP SPECULATING, AMERICA – ‘but we’re clowns. How much does it diminish the office of the Presidency to even notice what we say?’
He sure didn’t feel that way when Obama and Biden were in office. He certainly doesn’t feel that way about Obama’s social media post, very much noticing what Stephen has to say.
But logic has no place here. Colbert is in his feelings, and he wants to go out feeling aggrieved, targeted and victimized.
Who are we to deny him?
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