Recommendations of the Editorial team
It’s officially the final week of The Late Show. For one of his final episodes, Stephen Colbert paid tribute to some of his late-night show’s worst ideas – including Michael Keaton dressed as a pigeon.
Monday’s show opened with a skit in which Keaton appeared outside Colbert’s office window as a literal bird man. In the clip, Colbert was struggling to come up with a show idea with the actor when he suddenly spotted Pigeon Keaton banging on the window and strutting around outside. “That pigeon looks just like Michael Keaton,” he mused. It turned out to be a surreal dream in which Keaton and Colbert – both as pigeons – fought over an old pizza slice.
The real Keaton eventually woke Colbert up, and the two discussed Colbert’s idea of dressing a celebrity as a pigeon. After Keaton assured him that he loved the idea, Colbert confessed, “The problem is, we ran out of shows and couldn’t fit the sketch in. So I thought, ‘Wait, what if we do an episode with the worst of The Late Show?’ With all the weird sketches that either completely flopped or that we liked as a team but thought the audience would absolutely hate.”
Quota pressure? Doesn’t matter.
He added: “So to speak, as if the quotas no longer matter.”
This became the theme of the entire episode, which celebrated some of Colbert and his writers’ stupidest ideas. “There’s so much important stuff going on in the world, but a lot of it is pretty depressing,” Colbert told the audience before unceremoniously skipping his monologue segment. “Here’s how it works tonight: We thought we’d give ourselves a little break because we’ve been doing this show for almost eleven years – almost 1,800 episodes now.”
He noted that there was enough material for a “best of” compilation, but they preferred to concentrate on the worst ideas. “We thought it would be funnier to show you stuff we shot but never aired – and call it ‘The Late Show’s Worst’. Although what you’re about to see is technically the best bad stuff we’ve ever done. Still, not exactly great.”
Unpublished fails and a rain of fish
The episode featured Colbert’s recaps of strange and unfortunate moments from filming The Late Show, as well as the host’s conversations with some of his co-workers about their work behind the scenes. Towards the end, Colbert Staff Writer Michael Cruz brought Kayne on stage for a musical number called “It’s Raining Fish” – with support from Paul Schaffer.
The Late Show airs its final episode on May 21st. Tonight’s show includes interviews with Steven Spielberg and Colbert’s former Daily Show colleague Jon Stewart, as well as a joint appearance by David Byrne and Colbert. Wednesday’s May 20 episode features a performance by Bruce Springsteen and other guest appearances – plus Colbert answers his own “Colbert Questionert” for the first time.
Fallon and Kimmel resign
As previously reported, the other late-night shows will bow out on Colbert’s final night: Both Jimmy Fallon and Jimmy Kimmel will air repeats on May 21.
