It happened sometime during Stephen Colbert’s interview with Vice-President Joe Biden last night. During the tense and emotional chat in which Biden reflected on his recently deceased son Beau and mulled whether to run for president, Colbert demonstrated that his iteration of the Late Show – now merely three episodes old – is not only completely unlike that of his predecessor’s David Letterman, nor his former Comedy Central show, but unlike anything else on the late-night television landscape today.
Seemingly on the verge of breaking down, Biden talked candidly about loss and his skepticism about running in a segment that would have played out much differently elsewhere. On the Tonight Show, Jimmy Fallon may have played a game with the vice-president. Meanwhile, over on ABC, Jimmy Kimmel could have prodded him about having his infamous big mouth. If Colbert’s mentor Jon Stewart were still on the air, even he would have given Biden a quick seven minutes and perhaps joked about policy. Colbert did something different. Barely going for laughs, he hit at the emotional core of Biden’s conundrum and produced an interview none of his competitors could have pulled off.
Before taking the air, the most-discussed theme engulfing the past few months of hype was: who is the real Stephen Colbert? While his Comedy Central show saw him playing the part of a conservative pundit for the better part of nine years, no one really knew what kind of person would show up the stage of the newly renovated Ed Sullivan Theater when it was his time to take the reins.
But more important than that was how Colbert would make his Late Show different in a saturated talkshow landscape. Logic assumed that rejigging the modern format was akin to reinventing the wheel. There are only so many things you can do, with many of the brightest minds in entertainment tackling it and failing. (We all know how Conan O’Brien’s shot at the Tonight Show turned out.)
Then, a few weeks before its premiere, a clue. In a GQ cover story, Joel Lovell painted a tender portrait of the comedian in transition. Sure, there was silliness – with Colbert, there always is – but the piece was accented by themes of loss and grief with Colbert speaking candidly about the tragic plane crash that took the lives of his father and two brothers when he was 10 years old. A deeply thoughtful Colbert came into focus, and it’s that version of himself that he smartly brings to the Late Show.
With less than a week under his belt, Colbert has shown that no, there will be not be any games or lip synching. There will be no pranks. Instead, the show will be much more cerebral. In the past three episodes, Colbert did a dark bit about a mythical amulet that cursed him unless he plugged Sabra hummus (lampooning live advertising), and a biting, satirical sketch focusing on the media’s obsession with Donald Trump (likening their consumption of him to scoffing Oreos). He even interviewed inventor Elon Musk – perhaps the most unsexy booking they could have mustered.
Setting this tone was the new Late Show’s very first segment. When Conan O’Brien took over for Letterman’s Late Night in 1993, his opening sketch, which lampooned the pressure surrounding his appointment, showed him getting ready to hang himself in his office. One of Jimmy Fallon’s first bits after taking over The Tonight Show from Jay Leno featured a parade of quick celebrity cameos, including Kim Kardashian and Lindsay Lohan. On Colbert’s debut episode, he chose to kick off the proceedings with an earnest opening in which he sang the Star Spangled Banner at various locations across the United States. If Jimmy Fallon is throwing a party on NBC – he literally played drinking games with celebrities – over on CBS, it seems that Colbert is trying to elevate the entire format. And in an age where talkshows have become more flash than substance, Colbert is exactly what the format needs.
