A Funeral for Stephen Colbert's "Late Show"

Stephen Colbert’s final Late Show broadcast came after months of planning following news of cancellation. The timing followed conflict with CBS leadership over perceived capitulation to Donald Trump during efforts to finalize a deal involving Skydance Media. The farewell felt like a hastily arranged funeral, with many celebrity friends appearing as playful contenders for the last guest. Other late-night hosts made a surreal cameo, portraying a tear in reality backstage at the Ed Sullivan Theatre. Paul McCartney attended, sharing stories and promoting an upcoming record, while Colbert’s joking question about meeting the Pope created an awkward anticlimax. The tone suggested that no onstage spectacle could match the spectacle of his firing.

"He got the news back in July, then shared it in turn with his audience, his face glistening with a still fresh coat of shock, betrayal, and wounded anger. He'd overplayed his hand with the biggies at CBS, calling them out for capitulating to Donald Trump, right in the middle of the network's attempt to finalize a deal (now fatefully inked) with David Ellison's Skydance Media-and he ended up with a cancelled show. I don't think those ten months to plan helped him so much, though."

"Here, at the end of the line-not just for his eleven-year tenure but for a long-lasting pillar of late-night network TV-Colbert seemed like he'd been asked to put a pretty face on a hastily arranged funeral. Lots of friends showed up, people like Ryan Reynolds and Bryan Cranston and Paul Rudd and the very funny Tim Meadows, all jokily vying to be the show's official final guest. The other extant besuited desk dudes-Jon Stewart, Jimmy Kimmel, Jimmy Fallon, Seth Meyers, and John Oliver, the waning brotherhood for whom Colbert's cancellation is not unlike a death in a very small, once great family-made a surrealist cameo about a greenish hole, some tear in the fabric of reality, that had opened up backstage at the Ed Sullivan Theatre, where the show has been filmed for many years."

"Paul McCartney was there, telling stories about his old neighborhood and hawking an upcoming record. Colbert asked His Paulness if he'd ever met the Pope. Nope. "Oh, I have," Colbert said, pretending to gloat. It was an awkward time, perhaps a fitting anticlimax for the beginning of the end of the late-night era. Colbert's decision to make the show an only slightly more self-indulgent version of his usual fare felt like an acknowledgment that no spectacle he manufactured could hope to rival the spectacle of his firing, which revealed just how to"

Read at The New Yorker