If the first rule of the internet is to never read the comments, then Seth Meyers has been gleefully breaking that rule for years.
In February, Meyers celebrated his 10th anniversary as the host of NBC’s Late Night. Though that milestone was impressive—Meyers is only a few hundred shows away from surpassing David Letterman’s NBC-era tenure—he had another important moment occur in April: the 100th episode of Corrections, the Emmy-nominated web series in which the host acknowledges mistakes he or the show itself may have made in the past week.
Granted, Meyers himself might consider this somewhat smaller marker of time a bit more dubious. Yes, it’s all well and good that he has hosted more than 1,500 episodes of stellar late-night television, blending biting political commentary on the day’s news with a loopy house style of comedy. But Corrections might just be the late-night talk series’ masterstroke, especially since it began morphing during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Late Night With Seth Meyers was already a nightly highlight well before the early days of 2020. The series’ recurring segments run the gamut from skewering his writing staff’s monologue work in “Surprise Inspection” to Meyers’ playful self-awareness of his being a straight white guy in “Jokes Seth Can’t Tell,” wherein show writers Amber Ruffin and Jenny Hagel deliver the punchlines to jokes that would sound tone-deaf coming from him. (A slightly less frequent but equally funny segment is “Second Chance Theatre,” in which Meyers and some of his fellow Saturday Night Live alums perform sketches that were nixed before ever airing.)
One of the key markers of success for any late-night host is their ability to adapt and improvise in the moment. Sometimes, it comes down to how well you can play off a monologue one-liner that may not have gotten the reaction you wanted or expected. Meyers is unquestionably very good at riffing on jokes that either don’t land the way he wanted them to—or don’t land at all.
The delightful Corrections, however, is an audience-free endeavor. That doesn’t mean Meyers is delivering Corrections to an audience of none. Just as Late Night With Seth Meyers has gradually turned many of its crew members (not just the writers) into on-screen characters, the same is true of Corrections. Often the only person on camera is Meyers, but he cheerfully references everyone from his cue card guy Wally to his executive producer Mike Shoemaker (a.k.a. Mikey the Shoe).
On one hand, Corrections is very much an of-the-moment show; even when the show goes on a hiatus for a week or two, Meyers returns to primarily reference fairly recent episodes. But the word “primarily” is doing a bit of work there. As any of the regularly watching “jackals” ( the name Meyers has bestowed upon frequent commenters and correctors) knows, there’s often a Russian nesting doll’s worth of inside jokes or callbacks. Sometimes, the running gags are simply watching Meyers balance his seeming enjoyment of riffing on miscues that may have happened in a given episode (often extremely, pedantically tiny ones) and a potential sense of impatience with exactly how nitpicky the commenters can be.
Though each episode of Corrections is very funny, an installment from just after the actors’ and writers’ strikes ended may well be a series high point. Meyers can’t contain his frustration after having to clarify that there’s no such thing as seagulls, the ankle bone isn’t a bone but a joint with three separate bones, and that peanuts aren’t nuts. “It’s fun doing a show for you!” he sing-song snaps at one point, to a lot of well-deserved laughs.
So much of what makes Corrections special is its interiority. Though Late Night With Seth Meyers has a wider tent (even accounting for The Daily Show-esque “A Closer Look” segment that centers most episodes), Corrections is an in-joke to the max. Part of the inside joke is wondering where the sly tongue-in-cheek nature ends and sincerity begins. (Sometimes that’s not exactly a puzzle, though. Right before the WGA strike began, Meyers ended the last Corrections with a genuine call of support for his writing staff and all writers. Another example came when he briefly but kindly eulogized Matthew Perry after the actor’s untimely passing.)
Arguably not all the in-jokes make sense if you start watching with some of the most recent installments—to the point that one of the actual in-jokes is Meyers sarcastically pointing out that people probably have to start with Episode 1 if they want to be truly in on the gag, which would mean hours and hours of YouTubing.
Of course, the fun of Corrections is also what makes it hard to really put into words, equivalent to how explaining a joke probably robs it of any of its initial humor.
It’s easy enough to describe some of the gags and running bits on Corrections, from the terrifying presence of Mac Tonight (who surely everyone remembers as being a McDonald’s mascot in the late 1980s) to visual gags at the ends of episodes as Meyers holds an index card with a message written facing the camera to dad joke-style one-liners. (In the episode above, when Meyers shares that seagulls are apparently called herring gulls, he dryly states “That’s not what I’m herring.”)
Even the extended 50th episode celebration—with recorded greetings from guest stars as goofily random as Nathan Lane, Werner Herzog, and ice cream mavens Ben and Jerry—is hard to explain as much as experience. (“You’re gonna want to leave, and catch up,” Meyers states at the outset of that installment to any curious newbies.)
Corrections has, as Meyers often notes, been nominated for two Emmys in Short Form Comedy, Drama, or Variety Series. And it has lost both of those Emmys to James Corden’s Carpool Karaoke: The Series. But maybe Meyers’ luck is about to change. Just last week, Corrections was nominated for a third Emmy in the category (as was Carpool Karaoke).
Late Night With Seth Meyers is long overdue for an Emmy or two (having only earned its first nod for Outstanding Talk Series in 2022, though its writing team has been acknowledged going back to 2017), but arguably Corrections should remain Emmy-free, proudly and defiantly. A show as daffy as this, as simple to describe yet complex to experience, is too good for awards.
Its loosey-goosey nature may almost defy description, but its pleasures remain as clear and as consistent now as when Meyers started up this series in 2021.
As Corrections approached its 100th episode in April, Meyers began hinting he might stop the web show at that century mark. Though he has indeed been serious a couple times during Corrections, any true jackal knew that Meyers wouldn’t be able to resist debasing himself for more Corrections. On Friday, July 19, Episode No. 108 was released.
This story originally appeared on Primetimer.