Stephen Colbert, Who Stewarded Late Night TV Through a Dark Time, Wraps 'Late Show' with Joyful Finale

by Julian Spivey

Photo: CBS

 
I truly didn’t know, when David Letterman ended his stint as host of the ‘Late Show’ in 2015, whether I would continue to watch the show. I had been a Letterman guy for at least 20 years, starting as a kid who would stay up late to watch the show during summers and holiday breaks and then almost nightly throughout college and into early adulthood.

However, it didn’t take me long to find a new late-night TV friend in Stephen Colbert. He was a great steward for the show during such a trying time in America. Colbert wasn’t as wacky as Letterman, but he was as good an interviewer and had just as cool musical guests. Colbert was certainly capable of being wacky, and I enjoyed it when he was, but he – and late-night television for the most part – were thrown for a loop circa 2016 and had to change as America did. Colbert said during the early stages of the finale on Thursday, May 21, that his mission statement on his previous show, “The Colbert Report,” had been: “Anyone can read the news to you. I promise to feel the news at you.” He then said, “I realized pretty soon in this job that our job over here was different. We were here to feel the news with you – and I don’t know about you, but I sure have felt it.”

It’s that honesty that made me a fan of Colbert. It’s why people who didn’t feel like him hated him. It’s why the rest of us loved him.

I was a bit surprised how much of the elongated finale of “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” felt like a normal episode – sure, it opened with his summation of what the show had been for over 1,800 shows, but after that, the monologue, “Meanwhile” segment and even an interview with a guest felt pretty normal.

Letterman opted not to have a guest on his elongated final episode 11 years ago, and I kind of expected that. Colbert’s final guest, Paul McCartney, was a fitting one given that the show’s home was the Ed Sullivan Theater, where McCartney and his Beatles compatriots made their American television debut in early 1964.

It was also a bit surprising that the show ended mostly with a pre-taped segment, though it was certainly fun. Under the guise of technical difficulties, Colbert revealed there was a wormhole in the studio ready to take him and everything within the Ed Sullivan Theater to somewhere else within time and space. This segment featured great cameos from his friend Jon Stewart and fellow late-night TV hosts Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel, Seth Meyers and John Oliver before Colbert eventually got sucked into the wormhole.

Inside the wormhole looked like that place Eleven goes to in “Stranger Things” where it’s nothing but vast darkness, but Elvis Costello was there, and he started singing an unbelievably old deep cut “Jump Up” before being joined by Colbert, Colbert’s first band leader Jon Batiste and his latest band leader Louis Cato. It was a charming and lovely sing-along.

Then the show jumped back into reality briefly back at the Ed Sullivan Theater stage, where McCartney appeared once more, accompanied by Colbert, Costello, Batiste, Cato and the Great Big Joy Machine (‘Late Show’ band) for an instant classic version of The Beatles' hit “Hello, Goodbye,” a fitting one to end the show, with the entire staff of the ‘Late Show’ and Colbert’s family eventually joining the group on stage. At the end of the performance, Colbert and McCartney flipped off the power switch, and in a bit of TV homage to the series finale of “St. Elsewhere” and whimsy, the entirety of the Ed Sullivan Theater turned into a snow globe in Midtown Manhattan with Colbert’s dog Benny wandering up to it for a sniff before hearing Colbert’s voice say, “Come on, Benny. It’s Time to go.”

My favorite part of Colbert’s final shows was last week when he was joined by Letterman, the man who created the series for CBS in the early ‘90s, for an extended interview that concluded with Letterman and Colbert tossing CBS property off the roof in a classic Letterman bit. It ended memorably with Letterman echoing the great CBS newsman Edward R. Murrow, with a hint of sarcastic edge and a pointed message to the network that aired the show: “Good night and good luck, motherfuckers.”