Variety: Stephen Colbert’s ‘Late Night’ Finale an Underwhelming ‘Letdown… Gifted at Neither Interview nor Sketch’

Stephen Colbert’s final bow as host of The Late Show was panned as a “letdown” by Variety with the paper noting that Colbert was never good at either the show’s skits or its interviews with celebrity guests.

Colbert was ultimately fired by CBS as ten years of consistently falling ratings and forty-million-dollar annual budget deficits cut into his viability.

Thursday’s show was the host’s final night broadcasting from New York City’s famed Ed Sullivan Theater. In the end, though, Variety was not impressed.

Writing for the paper, TV critic Daniel D’Addario lamented that even in his final big show, “Colbert couldn’t, ultimately, escape being Colbert,” because his failings were still up front and center. The critic lamented, “Unfortunately, this host is gifted at neither interview nor sketch.”

D’Addario blasted Colbert, for instance, for constantly talking over his big guest, Beatles founder Paul McCartney.

“In one particularly inartful moment, Colbert attempted to pull rank on McCartney by asking if he’d ever met the Pope. (McCartney hadn’t; Colbert had, which is why he asked — to brag about it. But then, McCartney is a Beatle.)” D’Addario added.

He also ripped Colbert for appearing as McCartney’s back-up singer during the famed Beatle’s musical performance. D’Addario rightly could not understand why Colbert felt he had to be onstage mugging it up during McCartney’s songs.

The critic also pointed out that Colbert featured an “underdone bit” about the Pope refusing to appear on the show because the hot dogs at the Ed Sullivan Theater “didn’t meet his rider.”

Speaking of the Pope, Colbert apparently tried to earn some pre-last show hype by placing the rumor among the media that he had actually gotten Pope Leo XIV to be his final guest.

Early in May, Colbert had told the media that getting the Pope on the show was his “white whale” guest coup. And many outlets assumed that meant Colbert had succeeded in getting the Pope to appear.

Varitey went on to pan Colbert’s material, especially the “wormhole” bit.

“Given almost a year’s worth of advance notice, one might think Colbert might have come up with better material. Particularly baffling was the disastrous taped sketch about a wormhole consuming his studio that took up the better part of the show’s second half,” D’Addario wrote, concluding that the bit was nothing but a “total time-suck.”

In the end, D’Addario felt that Colbert’s ego got the better of him.

“Colbert’s ‘Late Show’ endgame has seemed to reveal the host as not without a healthy sense of ego, as the production has allowed guest after guest to pay tribute to Colbert’s service to democracy and the wider world,” he concluded.

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