Where Have Late Night’s Signature Bits Gone?

Historically, television sitcoms have tended to depend on attitude, not verisimilitude.

At the moment however, there is a popular TV comedy that’s taking a serious—or at least semi-serious—run at capturing what it’s like to put on a late-night television show in this challenged era of linear TV.

The show is Hacks, the Max series that has already won three Emmy Awards for its star, Jean Smart. She plays Deborah Vance, a veteran stand-up whose late-stage career is relegated to the lucrative lassitude of Las Vegas. That is, until she takes on a brash young comedy writer, Ava (Hannah Einbinder), who pushes her to expand the limits of her material to include a more hip, contemporary attitude.

Verisimilitude? Well, Deborah’s story is not unfamiliar to anyone who followed the career of Joan Rivers. And so, with that as template, the plot turn of last season, when Deborah finally achieved her lifelong dream of landing a late-night show, was inevitable.

At least that’s what the show’s creators told me last year.

“We knew from the beginning of the show that we would set up that this was Deborah’s white whale,” explained showrunner Jen Statsky.” And eventually she would get it.”

The result? The show’s fourth season is about being careful what you wish for.

Through the season’s first three episodes, the dream job has brought not just more conflict between Deborah and Ava, but a dose of reality about the current state of late night.

That includes a scene where network executive Winnie Landell, played by Helen Hunt, sits both characters down and tells them, essentially, that tapping a warhorse female comic like Deborah was a Hail Mary attempt to save late night from extinction—at least at that fictional network , which looks like CBS, in part because of scenes shot on the former CBS Television City lot.

The show also references, more than once, James Corden, who created an opening in late night himself when he left his rather successful show at CBS.

What Winnie also tells the Hacks stars is that they’d better have some idea of what kind of splash they’re going to try in this late-night rescue mission: “Where’s your ‘Carpool Karaoke’?” she asks.

That is a reasonable question, not just for the show, but for creatives across the real-life  late-night landscape. “Carpool Karaoke,” which Corden introduced on The Late Late Show during his first week as host, became a standout example of what’s often been crucial to making a late-night show a hit: the signature bit.

The signature bit is separate from the nightly monologue: Carnac, Stupid Pet Tricks, Clutch Cargo, and The Word are a memorable few entries on the list.

Ten years ago or so, signature bits took on even more importance because they tended to drive viewing online, a necessary secondary platform for shows being victimized by the drift away from linear TV. Jimmy Fallon had “Slow Jam the News,” Jimmy Kimmel had “Mean Tweets,” and Seth Meyers had “Second Chance Theatre,” to name just a few.

Some bits racked up staggering view totals. When Fallon did “The Evolution of Mom Dancing” with Michelle Obama, it eclipsed 27 million views on YouTube. Coreden’s “Carpool Karaoke” with Paul McCartney is now up to 74 million. And a total of 50 “Mean Tweets” videos accumulated over 131 million views.

For reasons not obvious, the signature bit has receded somewhat of late. The devolution of Twitter—with Elon Musk as a “X” factor—could certainly account for the disappearance of “Mean Tweets” (last seen in October 2022). And similarly, maybe the “Slow Jam” (last seen in 2019) lost some appeal when the news cycle starting coming at us so fast and furious.

Fallon still does bits like “Subway Busking” and “Classroom Instruments.”  Kimmel still “Unnecessary Censorship” on a weekly basis, and Meyers does “Day Drinking,” about as often as his liver can take it—that is, a couple times a year. (His “A Closer Look” generally occupies the second comedy slot after the monologue and is a favorite, though it is more monologue-y than it is a separate bit.)

What long-time fans of late-night surely notice is the near extinction of the classic “remote” bit: Letterman taking taco orders at a drive-in window; Conan O’Brien playing Old Timey baseball; Colbert visiting political conventions as Caesar Flickerman from “Hunger Games.”

Is it simply now how much tighter budgets are that the bits have been scaled back?

Not necessarily. Fallon still does games with guests that occasionally involve elaborate sets and planning. A couple of weeks ago, he and Jack Black put on flying harnesses and were swung upside down over huge piles of stuffed toys in a large-scale recreation of an arcade claw machine. Didn’t look cheap to produce.

And just last week, Colbert, who is, after all, one of the greatest sketch comics ever on television (he did a sketch character as late-night show host, brilliantly so, for nine years), performed an elaborately produced original song parody called “Billionaires Are Actually Good.” (And it was actually really good.)

This is likely what Helen Hunt’s network exec in Hacks had in mind. The show’s most recent episode concentrates on Deborah obsessing over which bit to use to introduce her late-night show. Conan running across the entire country in his first Tonight Show is cited as an example.

 After some pitches that would definitely earn the word “hacky,” she decides to try one about escaping late-night jail after 40 years in the business.

One about being in a DMV line for 40 years because that one’s all women and the men just step up to the window and get hired, worked better for me, but it’s Deborah’s show.

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