Too-Even Stephen

There’s no good way to say this right now, but there’s really no other time to say it, so I’ll just say it bad. Stephen Colbert was a disappointing host of The Late Show. He was mediocre compared to expectations, and mediocre relative to his competition.

The reason why is intriguing. I think, and it goes to the heart and soul of comedy. And of people.

As host of The Colbert Report, Colbert had been blindingly brilliant because he was permitted to not be himself. He was a gentleman, licensed to act like an asshole. He was playing a role, and in that role he was a jackass faux-conservative provocateur; he could carry that off without judgment or consequence or self-doubt.

He did it magnificently. It was a splendid act of satire, a transformation unseen before or since in late-night — he simply became another person, and maintained that pose for nine years. He coined the great phony word “truthiness” to defensively euphemize the indefensible — the right-wing assault on fact and science, in cynical pursuit of political goals.

For Colbert, the reinvention was armor, much like the armor he put on as a very young man, still in college, when he changed the pronunciation of his name from COLE-bert to the French sounding Cole-BEAR. It was strategic. Before that, he had been shy and withdrawn, still marked by the plane crash that killed his father and two brothers when he was ten. In college he had restructured himself. It was liberating. He became performative, a seeker of applause, possibly something of a ham.

The Colbert Report had not been a real reinvention, exactly, but it was gaudy new wrapping paper. Then it was gone. The character of Stephen Colbert was unsustainable on late-night, and his show was no longer on Comedy Central, a niche network. At CBS, on The Late Show, your package was yourself.

David Letterman —whom Colbert replaced — had been biting and inventive on the job because Letterman’s comedy emerged naturally from his discomfort in life and with himself, and his instinct for confrontation. It’s just who he was. That was not Colbert. Colbert is a devout Roman Catholic. He was the guy who worked a 10-hour day in the fruit-picking fields so he could testify in Congress about the plight of farmworkers. He testified entirely in character, but with heart. He demanded that Congress develop fruit that could pick itself, and dirt that could grow to waist level so the work wasn’t so backbreaking.

When the Colbert Report died, so did Colbert’s brio. He did not cringe at controversy — he could be perfectly biting and critical — but by and large, he seemed like a nice guy trolling for laughs, a far more conventional late-night host, somewhere between Leno and Letterman. There were dutiful, tepid celebrity interviews.

Colbert had an edge, but it wasn’t serrated. The times called for something harsher. Jimmy Kimmel produced it. Jon Stewart produced it. John Oliver produced it. Desi Lydic produced it. Seth Meyers eventually did, too.

What was wrong with the new, real Colbert? Nothing, really. He was still funny, but his shticks largely seemed generic. He did easier jokes, with lame asides. Check out the first few minutes of this monologue, and think what the other hosts might have done with this raw material:

At times, he laid down groaners. This was made all the worse with his choice of “sidekick” in the last few years. He miked up his bandleader, Louis Cato, who is a brilliant and versatile musician but who lacks spontaneity and a gift for quick-draw repartee. So usually what we got from that mike, offstage, was inappropriately timed guffaws to insufficiently funny jokes. It emphasized the strain.

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Colbert was hardly alone in adopting another persona to release his Id. Have you ever heard of Robert Smigel? Maybe not. But you probably know of his creation, Triumph the Insult Comic Dog.

Triumph is the unapologetically mean-spirited cigar-smoking puppet with a filthy mouth. He interviews people with blistering, hilarious hostility.

Robert Smigel is Triumph’s voice, has handler, his writer, his personality, and his lack of decency. Smigel, in real life, is an urbane, erudite comedian to whom other comics go to for lessons of subtlety, presentation, and timing. Triumph was Smigel’s triumph of reinvention.

Ditto, Zach Galifianakis in “Between Two Ferns.”

Ditto, Sacha Baron Cohen as Ali G.

Colbert did it as well or better than any of them. Here is his nimble, deadpan, nuanced minimalistic evisceration of Lynn Westmoreland, a sanctimonious congressman who wanted to put the Ten Commandments in public buildings. This is Colbert at his best, in The Colbert Report.

I’m guessing no one else will do this sort of analysis of Colbert right now; his late-night competitors admire him, and are being reverential to him for good reason. He was an inspiration for them, and a genuinely gracious, likable, accomplished role model who was blatantly mistreated by his network, and who showed a steel backbone in taking them on. He is a giant of TV, and was once a great pioneer. His performance on The Colbert Report was genius. His performance on the Late Show was … fine.

I do miss the intellectual saboteur he once was. I bet he doesn’t, though. And good for him.

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Today’s Gene Pool Gene Poll:

How are you doing in these bleak days? Yeah, me, too. We are in this together.

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