Stephen Colbert began his final week on The Late Show by answering the question his show had left dangling since it revealed the lineup for its last four episodes late last week: What exactly is “The Worst of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert (Not a Clip Show!)?”
The answer, delivered Monday night, was stranger—and more revealing—than a clip show.
Rather than tape a normal episode before the usual Ed Sullivan Theater audience, Colbert performed for a smatttering of Late Show staffers, turning what is normally a private daily ritual into the show itself. As Colbert explained, this is how the show rehearses every day: he gets onstage in suit and makeup, the staff watches him run jokes, and “as a special treat,” they watch him eat his lunch.
Not mentioned on-air was another reason the show departed from the usual format: Colbert attended his son’s college graduation Monday.
The episode’s premise, Colbert explained, was born from the fact that after eleven years and over 1,800 episodes, The Late Show had more than enough material for a traditional best-of. “But y’all got YouTube [for that],” he told viewers. Instead, the staff opted to show “stuff we’ve made but never aired” and call it “The Worst of The Late Show.”
That meant a tour through the show’s junk drawer: rejected graphics, abandoned field pieces, an unaired song, and a character whose previous appearances caused viewers to flee in droves.
The cold open set the tone, with Colbert dreaming of a pigeon with Michael Keaton’s head—a nod to an abandoned sketch involving a $15,000 pigeon costume, an unnamed guest who bailed, and Keaton ultimately deciding the idea was “too dumb for even me.”
From there, Colbert brought out longtime art director Andro Buneta for a trip through the “Graphics Graveyard,” revisited a failed field piece from the show’s archives, and brought back Shriekin’ Joe, Brian Stack’s Kid Rock/Ted Nugent-inspired sleaze guitarist, whose prior appearances came with a ratings chart no performer would want framed. Even Paul Shaffer turned up, joining Colbert and writer Michael Cruz Kayne for a shaggy performance of “It’s Raining Fish,” Kayne’s long-rejected parody of Shaffer’s own Weather Girls classic, “It’s Raining Men.”
In the night’s most fitting mishap, Colbert revealed after airing a rough-cut Chicago field piece with Paul Dinello that the show had accidentally rolled the wrong edit. “I believe that’s in the spirit of ‘Worst Of,’” he said. “The universe is conspiring for this thing to get worse and worse.”
CBS viewers got the 40-minute broadcast cut, but the YouTube version runs a full half hour longer (complete with Louis Cato and the Great Big Joy Machine‘s commercial break musical performances), preserving more of the episode’s loose rehearsal-room feel.
The uncut episode also includes the night’s most touching moment: Colbert’s tribute to longtime executive producer and showrunner Tom Purcell, whom he has known since 1988. Calling Purcell to the desk, Colbert presented him with bound volumes of the “nightly Toms”—emails Purcell has sent before show nights since 2009—and told him, “best show or worst show… I know I couldn’t have done any show without you for the last 18 years.”
Colbert closed one of his most unusual episodes by sending viewers into the extended, never-before-aired director’s cut of filmmaker Fernando Livschitz’s original opening credits made for The Late Show back in 2015, with the staff’s names displayed over them.
“Stay tuned for the rest of week of our final three episodes,” Colbert said at the show’s end. “They’ll be better than this.”
Watch the full unedited version of Monday night’s episode at the top of this post.
