Curse all those adoring celebrities, spoiling Stephen Colbert’s hopes for a low-key farewell!
As he opened the final episode of his “Late Show” on CBS Thursday night, the host said he’d decided against a farewell extravaganza in favor of “a regular episode where I come out here and talk about the national conversation.”
But he was barely into his first joke when “Breaking Bad” star Bryan Cranston interrupted from the Ed Sullivan Theater seats to offer to make a surprise celebrity cameo. “No, Bryan, those always seem kinda forced,” Colbert said to the Emmy winner, who stormed out in a fake huff.
Subsequent audience outbursts by Paul Rudd and Colbert’s old Second City friend Tim Meadows didn’t get in the way of the regular monologue the host promised, complete with jokes about New York sinkholes and the White House’s hantavirus chief.
Big-name bits aside, the opening largely was as the former Chicago improv actor promised: subdued and typical of the routine established since his debut in 2015.
There was a switchup in the “cold opening” before the opening credits: two segments instead of just the usual single topical comedy sketch. First, Colbert addressed both home and live audiences to give sincere thanks to his staff and his viewers.
A montage followed of great TV hosts of the past dating back to Jack Benny and Steve Allen, their snippets of dialogue forming a silly sendoff.
It’s been 10 months since Colbert revealed CBS was cancelling broadcast TV’s highest-rated late-night talk show. The timing raised suspicions of a political move meant to curry favor with the Trump administration. Two days earlier Colbert, a relentless critic of the president, had condemned the network’s $16 million payout to Trump in a lawsuit settlement as a “big fat bribe,” at a time when CBS’ parent company, Paramount Global, needed federal approval of its $8 billion deal to merge with Skydance Media. The network denied any connection and called the cancellation “purely a financial decision.”
It was the latest turn in the showbiz ups and downs of a man whose comic sensibility was largely shaped in Chicago.
After his childhood in South Carolina, Colbert went to college at Northwestern in Evanston and became active at Second City, first as a merch seller in the late ‘80s and then on the stages in the early ‘90s. He speaks fondly of his Chicago years and, on Monday’s “Late Show,” aired never-before-seen video of his return to town during 2024’s Democratic National Convention, when he bantered with a bartender at the Old Town Ale House and made an unannounced drop-in at his old apartment near Lincoln and Armitage avenues.
What’s next for Colbert? Short term, he’s attending his brother’s wedding this weekend and soon needs to get his stuff (already packed) out of the office. On Tuesday’s show he joked that he’ll spend next week “in a hammock ass-deep in a piña colada.”
But not for long. He has committed to co-writing a movie drawn from his beloved “Lord of the Rings” and has said he’s taking meetings with executives about other future projects. And he continues to serve on Second City’s board of directors and as chair of its Artistic Advisory Board.
Starting Friday, CBS will fill Colbert’s 10:35 p.m. time slot with “Comics Unleashed,” a low-budget comedian panel show that host Byron Allen is paying the network to air.