“We call this show The Joy Machine,” Stephen Colbert said in the opening seconds of his closing episode. “Because to do this many shows, it has to be a machine. But the thing is, if you choose to do it with joy, it doesn’t hurt as much when your fingers get caught in the gears.”
By now, everyone knows the hurt he’s referring to: “The Late Show” is over. CBS canceled the 33-year-old late-night staple created by David Letterman, despite its beloved host, top position in the ratings, and multi-platform marketing appeal. Colbert sat behind the desk for 11 years, and even with a 10-month lead-up to his last show, by no means did he, his team, or his audience feel ready to go.
And yet Thursday night, Colbert put on a good show. In a lot of ways, it was a show not unlike the previous 1,800 he hosted, and in every way, that was intentional. Colbert loved his Joy Machine, and he wasn’t going to let anyone or anything hijack his last attempt to do it exactly the way he wanted to do it.
Anything, that is, except a giant green wormhole. But let’s come back to that.
Colbert opened his last show by insisting he was going to put on a regular show, not something big and different, because every episode of “The Late Show” is special already. But the universe — and a slew of celebrities — had different plans.
A disappointed Bryan Cranston was the first famous audience member who asked to be Colbert’s final guest and thus became the first to be politely rebuffed. Paul Rudd was next, who brought six five bananas as a “customary” retirement gift, which got a quick callback when Ryan Reynolds bestowed the same gift on keyboardist Corey Bernhard. Tim Meadows hoped his decades-long relationship with Colbert would land him in the coveted guest seat, while Tig Notaro had no idea there was a reason to covet it at all. (“It’s your last show?,” she deadpanned.)
In between shout-outs from the crowd, Colbert played it straight, rattling off jokes about the day’s headlines, revealing one last First Draft, and sharing shrewd bits of history about The Ed Sullivan Theater. (“Backstage, Elvis used the bathroom and didn’t die.”) He ran through a “Meanwhile” segment well-suited for disruption, and even fit in a bit about the pope — Colbert’s dream guest — to set up his actual last guest: a surprise appearance by Paul McCartney. (OK, it was less of a surprise after “The Late Show” social team blasted it out before the broadcast began.)
Here, Colbert got to flex a little, albeit casually. Always a nimble interviewer, the host lightly prodded the lead Beatle seated beside him, getting into topical issues (“The land of the free, the greatest democracy, that is what [America] was… and still is, hopefully”), goofy stances (“I hate cookies,” McCartney said about his iPhone. “I bought you. I don’t want you to change”), and even light existentialism, including the songwriter’s earliest memory of music.
To start, McCartney handed over a gift. No, not bananas; this gift was pegged to the night’s other, more meaningful motif: the Ed Sullivan Theater via a signed photograph of The Beatles historic performance there. Even if the inscription doesn’t say “Colbert is better than The Beatles,” as he claimed it did, the photo is a sweet recognition of not only the host’s significance to the theater, but to what’s being lost when that stage goes dark. It framed their conversation, too, marking the beginning of the end. (McCartney would be there until the very last moment.) But for those who enjoy an intimate, intelligent chat more than regurgitated bullet points or mindless games, Colbert’s conversations were always like this: pleasant, personal, and wholly his own.
Also wholly his own: big, silly sketches. Throughout the evening, Colbert complained about a strange noise paired with a green light that intermittently appeared behind his desk. Eventually, it proved too much to ignore, and he threw to commercial and walked backstage to investigate himself. There he found an inter-dimensional wormhole threatening to destroy late-night television as we know it. Brought on by two contradictory realities existing at once — “The Late Show” is the No. 1 rated show on late-night, and “The Late Show” is also canceled — the menacing green orb swallowed Neil deGrasse Tyson (right after he explained what it was) and lured “a wise mentor figure” to help Colbert sort out what to do.
Jon Stewart, appearing “on behalf of Paramount,” pushed his friend and former colleague to face the future on his own terms because it isn’t going away. “The hole’s here, you can’t ignore it, the only choice you have now is how you choose to walk through it.” A few spit-takes later, Stewart left and Strike Force Five — the nickname for late-night hosts Seth Meyers, John Oliver, Jimmy Kimmel, and Jimmy Fallon — stepped in with their own words of encouragement, before the wormhole broke containment and started sucking up the theater’s audience.
When Colbert returned from an actual commercial break, he was in an empty void furnished with a single light bulb and a chair. Then, Elvis Costello started singing “Jump Up,” and he was joined by former “Late Show” bandleader Jon Batiste and current leader Louis Cato, along with Colbert. When the meaningful tune finished, Colbert said “good night,” and for a second, it appeared “The Late Show” would go out without its typical closing segment: a live musical number. (Everything after Colbert left the McCartney interview was pre-recorded.)
But then the lights came back on, and McCartney, Costello, Cato, Batiste, and Colbert were all in front of the live studio audience, singing “Hello, Goodbye” — which just so happened to be the finale’s title. Soon, Colbert’s family, guests, and crew flooded the stage for a group sing-a-long reminiscent of the host’s “Colbert Report” ending, but before they could finish, the pre-taped sketch resumed and Colbert was standing in the theater’s basement. All the voices could still be heard singing above him, but he stepped aside and let McCartney pull the lever to shut down the Joy Machine.
Technically, that wasn’t the very last image — the wormhole sucked up the whole theater, spit out a snow globe, and Benny, Colbert’s pet dog, sniffed the souvenir before being ushered onward by his owner — but when the lights went out on Broadway, that was that. “The Late Show” had ended.
Looked at one way, it’s a tragic final image: a television institution designed to bring joy to the world shut down by spineless corporate goons hoping to appease a petty, wannabe-dictator. But if you look at it another way, Colbert went out on his own terms. He resisted the temptation to take his leave guns blazing, as Stewart begged him to do earlier in the week, and he rejected a finale built on overt sentimentality in favor of an ending that hewed as closely to the previous 1,800 episodes as possible (and got a lot of laughs on the way out the door). That was, after all, what he loved to do.
“We love doing the show for you, but what we really, really love is doing the show with you,” Colbert said in the opening seconds of his closing episode. “Now, I’ll say to you what I’ve said to every audience for the last 11 years, and I have meant it every time: Have a good show, thanks for being here, and let’s do it y’all.”
On Thursday night, Colbert did exactly that: He put on a good show. A meticulous show. A layered show. A special show but also a show like all the others that collectively built our “reciprocal emotional relationship,” as he called it. Emphasizing as much is a clever way to magnify what we’ll miss about the reliable, imaginative, and ultimately irreplaceable late-night show, just as it strikes a sincere final note for a host cherished for his sincerity.
Here’s hoping Colbert says hello again soon — in whatever way he wants.
“The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” is available on Paramount+. Watch clips from the finale below.
