A metaphorical moment ago, we were clinging to a picture of Stephen Colbert in a captain’s hat as our only proof of life, but now he’s everywhere — doing pushups, mocking Donald Trump, shaving his beard, hosting a podcast, and also a Michigan public access show. This is all par for the course considering the fact that Colbert has been off the air for almost seven months and that, with The Late Show about to premiere, the time has come to get people’s attention.
But while the action is predictable, the contents of these dispatches to Colbert Nation have been far from it. Colbert isn’t just reminding us that he exists, he’s reminding us why we care with these fun, clever, and weird “stunts.” He’s also shedding a little bit of light onto the question that has some comedy nerds a little bit nervous in the post-Letterman/soon-to-be-post-Stewart era: what kind of show will The Late Show with Stephen Colbert be when it debuts in September?
Here are a few theories and a few educated guesses based on Colbert’s scant appearances, podcasts, and videos.
The desk run is ALIVE!
The Colbert Report was Stephen Colbert’s show and he understandably felt like he deserved all of the audience’s love, thus, when it came time to welcome a guest, Colbert trotted out to absorb all available applause. On Only in Monroe, the same was true, so does that mean that there’s a chance Colbert will keep the tradition alive when he goes to CBS? Anything is possible. If executives are willing to let James Corden sit 18 inches from his desk, I imagine Colbert will be allowed a much longer tether.
Man of the people
For the most part, late night comedy has either submerged itself in the mud pit that is current events and politics, or determined that living in the clouds with fluffy celebrity interviews is the way to go. With the exception of Conan’s remotes and Jimmy Kimmel’s sidewalk bits, regular people have virtually no place in front of the camera on late night. But that’s not how it used to be. Letterman’s early antics made great use of the people that worked in and around 30 Rock and then later the Ed Sullivan Theater. Colbert would be wise to follow suit, not because of that tradition, but because he has an obvious way with non-movie stars. Witness his end-of-the-series garage sale on The Colbert Report and his easy way with the hosts of Only in Monroe.
Characters and sketches
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFVC3qYGYiE
Jimmy Fallon pretty much stands alone in terms of late night hosts who can ably slip into other characters to put forth top-notch comedy sketches, but while Colbert is primarily known for playing one character — conservative blowhard Stephen Colbert — his background is in sketch, touring with Second City, and working on short-lived shows like Exit 57 with Amy Sedaris and Paul Dinello, and The Dana Carvey Show.
Colbert’s take on a Trump-like character in the above clip is solid, but beyond that, it shows that Colbert may explore his range a little on The Late Show. His bonkers take on a poorly-thought-out financial meltdown bunker escape, on the other hand, goes in a completely different and wonderfully absurd direction, from the homage to the Twilight Zone and his demands for the head of the false prophet Jim Cramer. Colbert’s going to bring a wide palette to his non-monologue comedy bits, is what I’m saying.
A familiar friend
In a way, we don’t really know the real Stephen Colbert. Or at least we didn’t when he retired The Colbert Report and his persona from that show. But is that Colbert really gone?
Colbert spoke to how he and his writers are approaching that character during the first episode of The Late Show podcast, and it doesn’t sound like the predicted ban on that side of Stephen Colbert is going to hold up. Not entirely, at least.
“One of the things that we’re… running away from is too strong of a word. We first came in by going, ‘We’re not going to write the character!’ You can’t not do something, you can only do the things that you want to do. So we kind of dropped that after awhile and just wrote whatever made us laugh. And go, well is that the character or is that not the character? Or does that work with the character out of it, you know? But that’s a little bit of a hard gear shift.”
Colbert also said that the character was a “base coat” and discussed jumping through hoops to justify that character’s place in a bit. Is that part of why, as he told Jerry Seinfeld, he was about done with The Colbert Report before getting Late Show job? Perhaps, but either way, that’s something Colbert and his team don’t have to do anymore, perhaps freeing them to take some of that character while leaving the inflexible parts behind. Remember, Stephen Colbert, the creation, was comprised of many parts.
Awkward interviews
Stephen Colbert gets a lot of credit for his interviewing skill, and it’s all deserved. Especially since he often found a way to cut through a guest’s firewall with his oblivious shtick, extracting real moments with a fake character. As the Eminem interview on Only in Monroe showed, that “part” of the Colbert creation is still alive as well, but will it continue to be?
It seems hard to believe that Colbert will turn the obliviousness on and off on his new show (though Letterman certainly had two distinct gears), just the same as it feels unlikely that a broadcast audience wouldn’t tire of that angle over time, but who knows? Over the last few years, late night audiences have accepted everything from Fallon and James Corden’s fluffy interview style to Craig Ferguson’s casual “f*ck it”-ness and Jon Stewart’s penetrating questioning — so maybe the mode doesn’t matter as much as the result. And if that’s the case, Colbert can certainly find the right route to that.
In closing
The Colbert Report is dead, long live whatever comes next. This Colbert is more self-aware than the character and he’s slightly less bombastic, but he’s still a bitingly clever guy with a pretty unique and sometimes silly comedic sensibility who probably gets intellectually turned on by the same things that he has for the last decade. I like this new guy and you probably do too. And if Colbert’s campaign to reclaim his never-vacated spot in our hearts rolls into the debut of his new show and he lets the audience come to him (as opposed to cowing down to some dated perception of what an 11:35 p.m. broadcast audience needs), then Colbert’s Late Show will be the kind of counter-programming that late night comedy needs.
