Aug. 07--You knew Jon Stewart was serious about this final-show thing because it took place on Thursday, the same night ten GOP presidential candidates crowded a debate stage, most clamoring for voter recognition and ways to disassociate themselves from their putative frontrunner, Donald Trump.
This was a story tailor-made for Stewart's "Daily Show" and its precision critiques of our leaders and the institutions that cover them. But after more than 16 years and almost 2600 shows, Stewart is done, at least for now, with having things made by tailors.
Instead Thursday, he took a slow walk into the sunset -- 60-plus minutes instead of the usual 30 -- flanked by old friends, colleagues, family members and adoring fans of a Comedy Central series that helped reshape American television comedy and taught all of us a little bit more about how to pay attention to the men behind the curtains.
With a show that had been so pleasingly acidic through the years, you had to wonder if Stewart would go out on a more sugary note, like Stephen Colbert and David Letterman had both done in their recent late-night finales.
The answer was no. Stewart kept it tart while also making it nostalgic and personal. Ending a long-running talk show after Johnny Carson has already done it cannot be easy, but Stewart, the 52-year-old New Jersey native, came pretty close to doing it perfectly.
The show didn't feel long, especially with the buoyant ending: Bruce Springsteen, a Stewart hero, playing "Born to Run" as the host, his wife, young kids and colleagues danced in front of the audience.
The night started exuberantly, too, with a bit that saw virtually the entire roster of past "Daily Show" correspondents come back. This epic opening segment -- pegged to pretending to cover the evening's Republican debate (before, in fact, it had even happened) -- kept building on itself as it stretched nearly 30 minutes without commercials.
It saw one old face and current comedy star after another -- Steve Carell, Ed Helms, Larry Wilmore, Lewis Black, Rob Corddry, Samantha Bee, even founding "Daily Show" host Craig Kilborn -- return to, mostly, poke fun at Stewart. It felt like a "Daily Show" segment, but ramped way, way up.
Where, you had to wonder, as one person after another dropped in, was Colbert, along with Carell the biggest star "The Daily Show" has spawned?
He came in, of course, at the very end, and he soon went off script to pay a tribute that appeared to take Stewart by surprise.
"We learned from you, by example, how to do a show with intention, how to work with clarity, how to treat people with respect," Colbert said, as Stewart fought back tears. "You are a great artist and a good man."
That paean built on all the ones the have been piling up for Stewart in recent days. Just the night before, on the penultimate "Daily Show," the comic Louis C.K. had said, "You kept it this good for this long... It's really one of the great comedy accomplishments of all time."
Like Letterman and Colbert in their finales, Stewart used a short backstage film to acknowledge staffers (and show the departing host as a benevolent dictator). The day-in-the-life segment is apparently the new Rolex. But Stewart raised the bar by doing it "Goodfellas"-style, in what played as a single-take walk-through with voiceover, this one including a testy encounter with "Goodfellas" director Martin Scorcese.
Because Stewart is, at heart, sincere about wanting to make things better -- even as he disingenuously proclaims he's just doing a comedy show -- he made sure to fit in a parting monologue about detecting B.S. around us.
The "best defense" against the substance, Stewart said, "is vigilance. So if you smell something, say something."
In that moment -- it came just before the Springsteen send-off -- he was reminiscent of Oprah Winfrey, whose own last show offered her less pungent, less amusing life lessons. (Also like Oprah, Stewart has been one of the last talk hosts to be serious about books, in his case non-fiction authors.)
But Stewart is skeptic enough to see himself from a distance, too. Earlier, in taped drop-ins, he let some of his longtime rivals take parting shots. Bill O'Reilly, Fox News host and frequent sparring partner, called Stewart "a quitter." Sen. John McCain went all the way to "jackass."
That tone was more in keeping with the one from Stewart's final run of shows, which have seen a festival of flagellation of the host, by himself and by his staff.
On Wednesday's "Daily Show," his remaining correspondents paid tribute to him as "A Man Who Was on TV." Stewart made fun of his own ineffectiveness against such repeat targets as Fox News Channel and ISIS.
"The world is demonstrably worse than when I started," he said. "Have I caused this?"
But the jumping off point for this self criticism was media criticism, the "Daily Show" topic which, for all the attention to its political edge, has seen it draw its sharpest and most well-aimed blades.
The target Wednesday was the lazy hyperbole headline writers employ to describe Stewart's satirical bits. What looks and feels like "critique" on the show becomes "evisceration" in the Internet recap of the segment.
If he had disemboweled as many of his targets as the headlines implied, Stewart suggested, why were they still doing dangerous, dumb and satire-worthy things? And what good, really, had he done?
He needn't worry. When Stewart took over "The Daily Show," in January, 1999, it was alchemy, two substances combining to make something far more valuable than either had been.
Stewart was a well-regarded comic whose stab at a nationally syndicated late-night show, self-titled, hadn't caught on. "The Daily Show," hosted by former ESPN anchor Kilborn since its start in 1996, was also well liked but not essential; it had been more about satirizing its genre than anything in the bigger world.
But with Stewart's sensibilities driving things, the show got tougher and more topical. It helped, a lot, that the fiasco of the 2000 presidential election came so early in its tenure.
Gradually, the formula developed: Say the things about the day's news they couldn't say on regular newscasts, and also challenge the newscasts for not saying them or for the ways they said what they said.
Use video -- and this was key -- to prove the satirical points. A crack research team routinely caught politicians and pundits in moments of hypocrisy, and the videotape proved it. Any good, forward-thinking newscast might have done the same, but Stewart's crew put in the work to find the material and then had the guts to air it.
Along the way, Stewart went on the CNN debate program "Crossfire" and called it out for shallowness; "Crossfire" was canceled not long after.
He and Colbert led a Washington rally whose point, more or less, was a saner politics. As Stewart might have pointed out about that one's effectiveness, Trump is now leading in a major political party's pre-primary polling.
Stewart feuded with O'Reilly, and they went on each other's shows, each getting a boost from the publicity.
But the moments that grabbed the headlines weren't the point. The night-in and night-out of the show -- always more influential than its 1.5 million or so TV viewers -- was the point. The ability to tune it at 10 p.m. central four nights a week and see something so much sharper and more concentrated than what the old-line late-night shows were doing.
With "Daily Show" and then its spinoff, "The Colbert Report," on the air, the likes of the "Tonight Show" and Letterman's "Late Show" seemed increasingly flaccid. (Colbert, of course, will take over "The Late Show" beginning Sept. 8.)
Stepping in for Stewart will be Trevor Noah, a young and very handsome South African with limited "Daily Show" or American experience. He could be great, but the fact that he used his on-air time in Stewart's finale to take a tape measure to the departing host's crotch doesn't bode well.
But even if Noah is superb and leads the show in bold new directions, it's fair to say that Stewart's legacy is secure.
