David Letterman and Jon Stewart had 20 years to get it right, so it's probably not fair to judge Stephen Colbert based on his first night as a late-night variety show host. But of course we'll do it anyway.
Letterman, of course, came to the Late Show as an Emmy-winning star after a decade of entertaining college students and insomniacs at 12:30 am. Stewart had a decade on Comedy Central to hone his craft before anyone started to notice he was on the air. Stephen Colbert is really only known for his The Colbert Report persona as a "narcissistic Conservative pundit" (a phrase he used several times on his debut;) America hasn't met the real Stephen Colbert yet. So he has his work cut out for him.
The new Late Show with Stephen Colbert began by introducing the refurbished Ed Sullivan Theater, which has been made over into an art deco movie palace complete with stained glass images of Colbert himself encircling the ceiling. Jimmy Fallon hired The Roots as his house band, and Late Late Show host James Corden has the multi-talented Reggie Watts; Colbert's house band is the unknown Jon Batiste & Stay Human, fronted by an effusive musical prodigy from Louisiana. Rather than the slick show-biz shtick of Paul Schafer & The CBS Orchestra, Stay Human uses a variety of rustic instruments, from tubas to a toy melodica, to create a musical gumbo that, at least on the debut, veered a bit too close to the twee retro cornball veneer of the Lumineers and Mumford& Sons.
One thing that's new about the current late-night landscape is that today's hosts do a lot more than chat; Fallon frequently sings and plays guitar, and James Corden is a Broadway-trained singer and dancer. Johnny Carson, Jay Leno, and David Letterman told jokes and talked, period. Colbert can sing too and started his show with a musical montage that had him traveling around the country - from corn fields and bowling alleys to a machine shop and a sandlot softball game - harmonizing with locals to "The Star Spangled Banner."
That was followed by a running gag in which CBS President Les Moonves sat poised with a switch that could change the feed from Colbert's show to a rerun of The Mentalist anytime Colbert got off track. That sounds a lot funnier than it turned out to be. But a bit in which Colbert used Oreos as a metaphor for the media's insatiable appetite for Donald Trump news clips worked much better. Other gags in the opening montage - including a supernatural amulet that forced Colbert to shamelessly shill for a sponsor - fell flat.
Colbert introduced George Clooney as his first guest, but since Clooney didn't have a new movie to promote, the pair did a scripted bit in which they invented a silly action thriller for the star to plug. It really wasn't very funny, but worse, it didn't give us any idea of Colbert's ability to engage with celebrities, something Letterman excelled at. The opening patter, in which Colbert congratulated Clooney on his marriage to human rights activist Amal Alamuddin., seemed stale and uninspired, given that Clooney's been married for a year.
The interview with Jeb Bush went a bit better, since Colbert did at least engage the GOP candidate in a real conversation and asked him one pointed question. Pointing to his own brother in the audience, Colbert said that while he loved his brother, he disagreed with him on many issues, so where do Jeb and his brother George W. Bush disagree? Bush answered that he wished his brother had done more to rein in Congressional spending. Bush didn't address - and Colbert didn't ask - if that included the trillions spent on invading Iraq, or whether that fiscal conservatism would have included cutting back the enormous Bush tax cuts for the 1% - questions that a Jon Stewart, Bill Maher, or possibly even Letterman might well have posed.
The expanded debut episode ended with a jam that included Batiste & Stay Human, Mavis Staples, Ben Folds, Brittany Howard of Alabama Shakes, and a slew of guest musicians (most of whom I didn't recognize and who weren't properly introduced) playing Sly Stone's "Everyday People." But the performance deserved more time and seemed rushed and poorly shot.
So Colbert gets a C+ for his first show and has us wondering whether he'll warm up to the art of the celebrity interview, if he'll continue to throw softball questions at his political guests, and if the show will figure out how to best present the talents of Jon Batiste and Stay Human. The answers, of course, are all almost certainly yes, and his guests for the rest of his opening week include Scarlett Johansson, the CEO of Tesla Motors, Vice President Joe Biden, and Kendrick Lamar, which will give Colbert plenty of opportunities to work out the kinks.
But man, I'm going to miss Dave Letterman.
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