Earlier this week, the actor John Lithgow appeared on “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” and did something that guests on the show have been doing a lot lately: He paid extensive tribute to the host.
Lithgow was so troubled by the idea that Colbert is leaving CBS after 10 years in May — a cancellation that has the appearance of Paramount’s new leadership trying to curry favor with the Trump administration — that he wrote a poem. Reading this ode, entitled “The Mighty Colbert,” Lithgow honored the “sublime masterworks” that are Colbert’s monologues, and asked, “So why is he canceled? Why trash all that pleasure? Why yank off the air this beloved national treasure?” (The answer, in Lithgow’s verse, was “a boss with thin skin and no laughter.”) The show’s host sat smiling as Lithgow laid it on ever thicker, declaring at one point that Colbert, in the years ahead, will “only get better, like aging fine wine.”
But by this point in his lame-duck tenure, Colbert is likely accustomed to endless fawning from his guests! Bette Midler, who performed on Johnny Carson’s final episode, sang a satirical rewrite of “Wind Beneath My Wings” in tribute to Colbert, rhyming “You stand for what’s right with wit and class” with “You never kissed the orange ass.” Drew Barrymore restaged her famous striptease on David Letterman’s iteration of “The Late Show,” this time whipping off a blazer to reveal a shirt emblazoned with “We [Heart] Stephen.” (Unfortunately, both Midler and Barrymore coming up with new versions of their legendary late-night moments only reminds the viewer how much more juice the format used to have.) And Jimmy Fallon covered Frank Sinatra’s “My Way” with new lyrics about — well, guess who? “In ‘28, you’d have our vote — you did it your way,” the song concluded.
Colbert’s removal from the air, when it was announced last July, was legitimately seismic news, for the industry and for an audience who saw him as a crucial voice for the anti-Trump Resistance since the 2016 election. The timing of the news, though, meant that Colbert had an entire final season to play out with all parties, from writers and producers to host to guests, knowing that the end was in sight. (This differentiates it from the brief period when “Tonight Show” host Conan O’Brien’s job was in limbo during the O’Brien-Jay Leno succession crisis — then, the precariousness and uncertainty of the situation gave the show incredible tension and voltage.)
What has ended up making it to air has been an increasingly puffy tribute to the show’s own host. The endless bouquets being tossed Colbert’s way have started to make the studio smell a bit cloying.
Granted, these are Colbert’s guests having an emotional response to a host they liked being removed from air, and in what seems to be an unfair way, to prove new Paramount CEO David Ellison’s Trumpist bona fides amidst the Skydance-Paramount merger. It reminds one of how many other institutions are caving right now — universities, law firms, to say nothing of corporations across the entertainment industry. But the show’s focus on its own host’s misfortune has become outsized and a bit dramatic, especially because so many other institutions are in crisis: With everything else going on in the world, we have to go through a monthslong celebration-of-life for a comedian whose job is coming to an end?
This tone necessarily comes from the top. Guests generally don’t just show up on talk shows and spontaneously do whatever they want; their appearances are choreographed in concert with the show’s production team. In a pre-interview, might a producer have gently guided Lithgow away from creating the spectacle of forcing Colbert to sit and smile while being called a “national treasure,” given that he’s already been tributed several times already?
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Watching the show, though, one doesn’t get the sense Colbert really minds. In a small, revealing moment in his interview of Jimmy Kimmel — another host who faced blowback and career consequences for angering Trump — Colbert asked who Kimmel heard from when news of his being pulled from air broke. Before waiting for Kimmel’s answer, Colbert enthusiastically volunteered that he himself, upon his cancellation, received texts from James Taylor and George R. R. Martin. His anger with CBS, which emerged during the strange incident of Texas Senate candidate James Talarico’s interview being pulled from air, is at least more interesting than his ever-growing awareness of just how many of his fellow celebrities love him.
The cause of standing up for a comedian who may have been tossed aside for angering the regime is getting tied up in honoring Colbert the celebrity, and it’s starting to feel wearying. Colbert deserved better treatment from CBS, but watching one person beam while receiving laurel after laurel doesn’t make the argument for his show’s relevance, as it’s frankly not very good TV, and — for this relentlessly political host — not in touch with the concerns of people who have been turning to “The Late Show” for its political perspective.
Finally, there’s the sheer pragmatic angle. Colbert will have a next act, at some future point. (For those who think he’s too toxic for any corporation that may have business before Trump’s Department of Justice to touch — well, presidential terms last four years, we’ve already made it through one, and Colbert’s only in his early 60s.) When that day comes, won’t it feel like an anticlimax, after we’ve already spent the better part of a year celebrating him?
From Variety US