What fans secretly want from Stephen Colbert’s new ‘Late Night’ era is finally coming to light.NH
Who will Stephen Colbert be?
The comedian will debut his version of The Late Show at 11:35 p.m. Tuesday on CBS, kicking off his own late-night era with George Clooney and Jeb Bush taking to the couch and Kendrick Lamar taking the mic. In a way, Colbert is in uncharted territory for these TV times: He gets a blank slate. Right now, all he has is good feelings.
Since Johnny Carson vacated his seat, late-night hosts have been saddled with backstories and controversies, beginning with the David Letterman-Jay Leno late-night wars and continuing in the Leno-Conan O’Brien publicity-stoked feud. Even James Corden, the moon-faced Brit who hosts CBS’s The Late Late Show, had to contend with angry fans of Craig Ferguson’s, who left of his own accord when Colbert got The Late Show.
But Colbert has more than just a lack of network baggage.
We already knew what we were going to get with Jimmys Fallon and Kimmel, who cut their teeth on late-night TV before taking their networks’ marquee desks. The same could be said of Seth Meyers, who has transferred his Saturday Night Live “Weekend Update” voice to a Monday-through-Friday gig.
For eight years, Colbert played a character, the ultraconservative host of The Colbert Report. He actively avoided being himself on his show and in interviews, preferring to be Colbert the persona rather than Colbert the person.
Keep it political
Making politics part of Colbert’s show seems inevitable. Bush will be a guest in the first week, and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) and Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer will visit in the second.
Because of sponsors and desire for mass appeal, politics has been soft in the network late-night sphere. But there’s no reason Colbert can’t bring politics to his new platform.However he does it, I hope he preserves the two things that marked political discourse on his show: substance and smarts.
Other late-night guys have politicians on all the time (Jimmy Fallon welcomes Donald Trump on Friday), but the conversation is more fluff, less meat. Take Gov. Christie’s recent appearance with Fallon, when he walked out of the interview after Fallon made a fat joke.
Please, be smarter than fat jokes.
Keep it weird
In Letterman’s heyday, he was delightfully weird. His persona was weird, his skits were weird, his regular guests were weird (Larry “Bud” Melman!). He was Just Plain Weird. And then, over time, he stopped being weird.
]When Conan O’Brien, who was positively oddball at 12:35 a.m., moved up an hour, he also took out some of the stranger aspects of his show to appeal to the masses who were used to Leno’s humor. He brought the strangeness back for Conan, his TBS show, but that doesn’t have the network reach.
Colbert has the opportunity to create an entirely new persona for himself, but I hope he doesn’t forget his fan base, which loved things such as his theatricality, hatred of bears, and narcissism played for laughs. If Craig Ferguson could keep things weird, so can Colbert.
His premiere run-up antics have shown signs that he’ll refuse to cater to the masses and choose instead to maintain his own weirdness, namely hosting Only in Monroe, a 40-minute public-access show that aired in Monroe, Mich., where he interviewed Eminem.
Weird? Yes, totally. Keep it up.
Discomfit the celebrities
Don’t let celebrities dole out canned stories about their vacations or their children or their better-than-yours lives. Why let that stuff on your show? Celebrities already have their own platforms, such as Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.
Fallon has succeeded in forcing his guests out of their comfort zones, making them do things such as play beer pong or take part in a lip-sync battle (a segment that has even spawned its own oddly addictive show on Spike).
This leads to moments of spontaneity and honesty lacking in a celebrity culture that assumes all sincerity is a sort of stunt.
Get rid of the pre-show interview, stop the mundane questions to tee up an anecdote, and don’t let the publicists control what gets asked. On that note . . .
Bring in non-celebrities
I’m sure whatever Gwyneth Paltrow has to say is positively fascinating, but one of Colbert’s strengths was his ability to pull charisma out of guests who were accomplished without being music, TV, or movie stars, folks such as authors, scientists, and professors.
The Colbert Report was one of the few places you could see such people on TV in a fun environment. Let them continue talking. As I said before, celebrities have enough platforms, but there are so many other voices that don’t. Give them airtime.
Don’t try to go viral
There’s something insufferable about this desire to go viral.
It’s no longer just about the hour these guys are on the air but also about how parts of the show will play on Facebook and Twitter to people who didn’t tune in. These made-for-social-media skits feel more like they are for the morning after, rather than for the show.
I get it: It’s hard to lure eyeballs to late night when there are so many other things to watch, and DVRs and Netflix make late-night viewing irrelevant. Going viral allows hosts to build their brands for those who would never think about turning to a network come 11:35 p.m.
As charming as Corden is, his rampant desire to go viral smacks of inauthenticity, and makes me not want to tune in.
The same can go for Fallon: I care less about The Tonight Show when I can see the best bits on YouTube the next day.
What I’m asking for is a show so vital it won’t be enough to see just the highlights. And, yes, that’s easier to write about than it is to execute. But Colbert has a chance to do something truly different and the talent to pull it off. That’s what really matters.
