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erlendbv · 6 years ago

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Recurring segments: The Late Show with Stephen Colbert

I’ve done quite a few of these now, already having looked at David Letterman’s previous iteration of The Late Show, and Colbert’s Comedy Central show, The Colbert Report.

But now it’s time for another classic, and again, I use the show’s Wikipedia page as a starting point. These are, as always, only my favorites. And this is, as we’ve gotten used to, a long one.

Recurring solo sketches

Bedtime Stories On occasion when Colbert has an author on the show, he ends the episode by asking the author to read him a bedtime story.

The Big Furry Hat Colbert dons a giant hat that comes down from the ceiling and makes a series of humorous proclamations that people must follow (e.g., "Actor Paul Rudd must begin aging like the rest of us").

Covetton House This is Colbert's take on celebrity luxury brands, especially Gwyneth Paltrow's Goop. Each sketch typically features everyday products with fancy names and jacked-up prices.

First Drafts Colbert invites a member of the audience up to read holiday/special event cards and their "first drafts", which poke fun at the event in question.

The Late Show Figure-It-Out-a-Tron In a parody of Glenn Beck's use of chalkboards, Colbert brings out a chalkboard with names of people implicated in an ongoing scandal written all over it. He then tries to figure out the links between these people by drawing lines connecting their names. These lines form a humorous and often crude drawing related to the scandal, such as a penis or swastika.

Midnight Confessions Colbert examines his conscience to his audience. He starts with a disclaimer that while the things that he confesses are not technically sins, he still feels guilty about them.

Stephen Talks with God Colbert talks with God, as portrayed as an animated character projected on the ceiling of the Ed Sullivan Theater.

WERD A segment based on The Wørd, a popular segment at The Colbert Report. Colbert chooses a word or phrase as a theme for a rant on a topical subject or news item while humorous captions displayed in a sidebar either highlight or sarcastically undercut what he is saying.

Wheel of News Colbert spins a wheel with random topics of news to talk about. Based on Wheel of Fortune.

Recurring guest sketches

Big Questions with Even Bigger Stars Colbert and a guest sit under the stars and have absurd conversations about topics. Such conversations include killing baby Hitler, what Santa does the rest of the year, and whether they would rather have feet for hands or hands for feet.

Community Calendar Colbert and a guest host a community calendar of events in the guest's hometown. Based on Colbert's special appearance at Only in Monroe, a local public access program in Monroe, Michigan, with Eminem as his guest.

Rescue Dog Rescue Colbert and his lead guest try to help find homes for dogs up for adoption by making up stories about them (such as claiming one dog knows the lyrics to the Frozen song "Let It Go", but will not sing them).

Bonus sketches

Here are some additional segments, collected from Slate.

All Up in Your Faith Colbert, a practicing, dedicated Catholic, has long been interested in the role of religion in American life, particularly as one way of answering his Big Questions. All Up in Your Faith allows Colbert to dig into various religions, explaining their rituals and idiosyncrasies for a mass audience. Segments so far have featured Buddhism (and the apparently tenuous succession of the Dalai Lama) and Indianapolis’ Church of Cannabis, which somehow does not feature anyone smoking weed at their services. See example.

Who Am Me? A segment impossible to imagine coming from someone who hadn’t taken Colbert’s unique path to late-night through faux-conservative performance art, “Who Am Me?” sets out to answer a now-ridiculous-seeming question asked by various pundits in the lead-up to the show’s premiere: Who is Stephen Colbert? Is he going to continue to riff on his older Colbert Report character? Be totally himself? Do something new entirely? The segment slyly riffs on the question by allowing Colbert to investigate his own identity. Thus far he’s taken the Myers-Briggs personality test (he’s an INFP) and a polygraph test, but future installments—including interviews with people like his childhood crush—promise to go even deeper. See example.

RejecTED Talks Colbert’s TED Talk parody sends up the self-seriousness and background condescension of the popular “educational” series. The talks Colbert supposedly found in TED’s rejected pile are pointless, long-winded, and delivered by goofy characters, like a wrestler overexplaining the transformation of a “simple, everyday cage” into a “decadent palace of suffering” or a kid describing what he did over his summer vacation. See example.

Hot Takes Part of the task of the late-night host is to present opinions on the issues of the day, some of which, inevitably, are deeply uninformed. These days, of course, such off-the-cuff bloviation is commonly known as a hot take. As Colbert puts it, “I can either talk, or I can know.” So this segment takes issues like the American prison-industrial complex and reduces them to immediate boos, hisses, and other knee-jerk reactions to complicated problems. It’s like the anti–Last Week Tonight of late-night: Instead of meticulously debunking conventional wisdom, Colbert cartoonishly champions it. And in doing so, he levels a critique of political discourse that might not be as thorough as Oliver’s but is no less cutting. See example.

#inspirasjon #late night

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