We haven’t seen hide nor hair of Stephen Colbert since his show went off the air in December (well, apart from his graduation speech). With all the debuts and farewells going on in late night, you probably haven’t thought much about him. But thanks to YouTube, he popped up again with a lot more hide and hair than usual to remind us that his stint on the Late Show starts in September. So, just what can we divine about the show based on this first video?
The conceit of his five-minute clip is that he’s grown a beard while on hiatus and has to shave it off because, now that he’s on CBS, Tom Selleck’s moustache has a non-compete clause. (Because I’m sure you’re wondering, Tom Selleck is on Blue Bloods, which everyone’s mom watches on CBS on Friday nights.)
The biggest concern about Colbert’s transition is what he’ll be like when he hangs up the “Stephen Colbert” character he played for nine years on The Colbert Report. Keeping the beard (which was quite comely) might have been a good way to differentiate the two, at least visually. A bad way to do it was by naming it the Colbeard and talking about how it set the internet on fire when he debuted it a few months ago. You could hear the strains of old “Colbert” when he was delivering this joke.
But quickly we get a dose of what he’ll be like without the crutch of his old persona. The clip was a lot more absurd than we’re used to in late night comedy these days, after decades of middlebrow Jay Leno and the increasing conservatism of David Letterman. Here Colbert is doing a dream sequence about his romance with his beard set to the music of Green Day’s Good Riddance (Time of Your Life), but with the lyrics from Camptown Races. By the end of the video, Colbert was riffing with a half beard in the voice of an insane hillbilly and there was no doubt that “Stephen Colbert” was dead, and we’ll be seeing a whole new cast of characters come September.
However, there were several throwaway jokes that do reflect the new world order of late-night TV, which is less about monologues and celebrity guests and more about performing stunts that are going to be huge hits on YouTube. (It’s no accident that this video premiered on the video-sharing site rather than CBS.com.) First there is Colbert’s reference to setting the internet on fire with his beard and then, when contemplating new facial hair options, he asks: “What do the millennials like?” It’s part of a gag (the answer, obviously, is “the Amish”), but it shows where his head is in regards to the show. The network wants the young viewers who love the web, so he’s trying to appeal to them even as he’s making fun of the strategy.
Once he gives himself an Amish chin beard, he jokes: “This shit is gonna go viral as soon as they get internet on their butter churns.” Again he needles the tactic while obviously partaking in it as well. With all of this meta commentary about the media, maybe he will be a fitting replacement for Letterman, or at least the early Letterman that was riffing on the conventions of the genre, not late-career Letterman which became the establishment.
As for a viral sensation, the video earned about 800,000 views over night, which is good, but not Jimmy Fallon lip-sync battle viral, Jimmy Kimmel twerk fail sensation, or the weekly deluge of “here’s what John Oliver said this week” blog posts. Heck, it’s not even as popular as when James Corden sings karaoke in cars with famous people (and no one in America remembers that Corden even has a show until he sings with Mary J Blige in an Escalade or some such).
This was the perfect peek into what we can expect from Colbert, something that was uniquely him and dreadfully funny, but still beholden to the new rules of the late night ecosystem. I have a feeling that Colbert is going to fit in just fine.
