Before settling in for a long chat with one of the most famous and beloved people on the planet, Colbert engaged in some clever misdirection. He prefaced his monologue with the claim that the finale would be a “regular episode,” then feinted toward the opposite extreme, teasing the Pope Leo appearance he’d long been campaigning for, all the while fielding cameos from celebrity pals. Finally, the wistful McCartney interview was interrupted by the opening of a throbbing, green portal in the studio. Neil deGrasse Tyson helpfully informed us it was a wormhole; Jon Stewart and Colbert’s Strike Force Five buddies Jimmy Kimmel, Jimmy Fallon, John Oliver, and Seth Meyers showed up to offer some late-night solidarity. And it looked like Colbert had vanquished the void—until it came back, bigger and scarier, and sucked up the entire set, B-movie style. On the other side of the wormhole? A stark, black room where Colbert found himself singing Elvis Costello’s “Jump Up” with Costello, former Late Show bandleader Jon Batiste, and his successor, Louis Cato. Back onstage, McCartney joined them for a rousing rendition of “Hello, Goodbye.” A comedy-nerd coda called back to one of TV’s strangest finales.
Given the political context, it makes sense that so much of the discussion around The Late Show’s cancellation has focused on the dire implications for free speech (especially when that speech isn’t as lucrative as it used to be). Colbert never stopped ridiculing Trump or the suits at CBS and its parent company, Paramount, whose decision to end his show coincided with a Paramount-Skydance merger that required FCC approval. In a cold open last week, he mocked the beleaguered CBS Evening News anchor Tony Dokoupil and CBS News head Bari Weiss for Dokoupil’s failure to secure a visa to cover the Trump-Xi summit. (“It’s the CBS Evening News, reporting live from the wrong China.” Cut to some guy flailing around with a pumpkin stuck on his head as a woman tries to smash it off him with a mallet.) Mainstream platforms for humor that skewers the powerful are disappearing, and with each one we lose, the likelihood that abuses of power will go unnoticed by those who don’t actively consume news grows.
Not every variety-show booking delighted every viewer (just ask the stiffs who hyperventilated when Elvis wiggled his hips on Sullivan’s stage), but there was enough, most nights, to captivate tens of millions of them. The mix was the point in late night as well. Colbert’s final music lineup included pop stars, country titans, rock bands, Broadway greats. Among his last guests were actors, filmmakers, politicians, chefs, journalists, comedians, songwriters, scientists. If you watched an episode from beginning to end, you might’ve seen someone you adored, someone you despised, and someone you’d never heard of before. You might’ve discovered a new favorite show or movie or book, or heard a great band your Spotify algorithm never would’ve surfaced. You might’ve listened in on an interview that expanded your worldview..
And so, here we are, a once-united American audience, splintered and squeezed into ever-tighter niches of people just like us. A generation ago, it was Fox News (whose Gutfeld! is now old-school conservatives’ late-night show of choice) vs. MSNBC and The Daily Show, with its pivotal role in the rise of political-confirmation-bias-as-entertainment. Now, fans who devour the narrowly targeted podcast episodes, live streams, and newsletters of Joe Rogan or Heather Cox Richardson or Candace Owens or Hasan Piker or Ben Shapiro or Pod Save America don’t want to be challenged with a diversity of perspectives; they’re there to be comforted by someone (at best a history professor, at worst a bigoted loudmouth) who will reflect their own beliefs back to them. This hyperspecificity isn’t just a political phenomenon. It has penetrated across demographics and tastes. Young women can choose between tradwives’ performances of domesticity and big-sister advice from self-appointed sexperts. Twitch is vast enough to enable a gamer to devote all their free time to consuming content related not to video games in general, but to one title in particular. There are entire, enormous platforms whose contours are unknown to the average person under 40, just as there are millions of teens and 20-somethings who watch more video on YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram than on linear or even streaming TV.
Still, The Late Show’s finale made a strong case that, as late night peters out, we’re losing some of the most valuable things that we could once find in abundance on television: collectivity, spontaneity, irreverence, ritual, the art of conversation, variety as an ethos as well as a genre. The greatest loss, as microdemographics turn away from and against one another and a grim pall descends over public life, might be that of late night as a venue to forget our differences (or at least laugh about them) long enough to have fun together, like a functional society. That’s bad for our democracy, even if it’s far from the most urgent threat out there. Colbert never could have saved us, but he did remind us, daily, of the stakes and offer an entertaining reprieve. So, what now? As Letterman told his former bosses in his last Late Show appearance, paraphrasing CBS’s giant of journalism Edward R. Murrow: “Goodnight and good luck, motherf-ckers.”
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