As you read this tonight, there will be a debate between presidential candidates Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. (If you read this later, mentally shift the verbs to the past tense.)
And wherever the nation goes in difficult times, comedy, its analytical antidote, will follow. Jon Stewart, who normally hosts “The Daily Show” on Monday nights, will move to Tuesday for a live post-debate edition, underscoring both the event’s importance and, institutionally, his own. And Seth Meyers, whose “Late Night” is arguably the most politically focused late-night show after “The Daily Show,” will move to an earlier time slot on Wednesday to host a special, “A Closer Look Primetime,” airing at 10 p.m. on NBC and streaming the next day on Peacock.
Late-night television, which only exists on so-called “linear” television, is that medium at its most permissive, and the later it runs, the more permissive it becomes. Late at night, after midnight, where Meyers works after Jimmy Fallon’s “Tonight Show,” Craig Ferguson’s card-throwing talk show flourished, Conan O’Brien established his own brand of weirdness after David Letterman’s own brand of weirdness, and a smoke-shrouded Tom Snyder held court with guests ranging from Marlon Brando to Charles Manson to Patti Smith to James Baldwin.
Back then, you had to stay up past bedtime to see them, before the internet exploded television programming, giving these shows a clubhouse and niche feel, making their self-selected audience feel like they were part of something special and, relatively speaking, outside the mainstream. In their own ingenious way, they are the punk clubs of television.
All late-night shows are, at least on the surface, political because the monologues are not related to current events. A new article in Rolling Stone, quoted by Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert in their monologues Monday night, points out that Trump, according to a source, “wanted to punish late-night comedians for making ‘illegal’ campaign contributions to the Democratic Party in the form of jokes and satire.” (“I finally made it onto an enemies list,” said Colbert, whose broadcasts from Chicago during the Democratic National Convention were essentially a celebratory aftershow. “There’s no guarantee I’ll get arrested, but it’s an honor to be nominated.”)
Trump is not wrong to say he is the target of much late-night humor, but there are reasons for that: He is an absurd human being who lies compulsively, spreads ridiculous conspiracy theories, and impeaches himself every time he opens his mouth. And since he has been trying to become president again since losing his last election and has spent most of his time in court, he is a target that is impossible to miss, difficult to ignore—and, not least, not difficult to imitate.
Of all the late-night hosts, Meyers, who took over “Late Night” a decade ago when Fallon moved to “Tonight,” is currently my favorite, which means I get what I need from him. During the pandemic’s lockdown phase, it suited his casual style to broadcast from the attic of his Connecticut vacation home, with a mysterious copy of “The Thorn Birds” on a side table, a painting of a sea captain as his sidekick and his kids running through it. It made sense that he left his suit and tie in the closet when he returned to the studio — he’s the only talk-show host still working the open 12:30 a.m. time slot. (CBS’ “After Midnight,” with Taylor Tomlinson, is a game show, not a talk show.)
If you’ve watched “Late Night” for any length of time, you’ve seen the rest of his family, including an episode of the booze-fueled “Day Drinking” in which his mother drinks more than he does. A paragon of the smart, average guy, even after years of hosting “Weekend Update” on “Saturday Night Live” (where he was also head writer), he seems to have somehow stumbled into a role he’s nonetheless perfectly suited to. With Meyers’s nods to the writers, exchanges with cue-giver Wally Feresten, ability to turn interviews into conversations and tendency to laugh in disbelief at his own material or delivery, “Late Night,” like Ferguson’s belatedly regretted “Late Late Show,” feels unprofessional and intimate, as if it’s something happening in real time and made by humans.
The standout feature of “Late Night,” carried over into Wednesday’s special, is “A Closer Look,” a long, fact-filled treatment of a specific piece of news that Meyers delivers at breakneck speed and that, much like Stewart on “The Daily Show” and John Oliver on “Last Week Tonight,” combines amusement, amazement, anger and horror while being extremely funny; Meyers wants you to laugh, but he also wants everyone to wake up. NBC is betting that a fair portion of the debate’s massive audience will want to turn somewhere afterward for context, relief, fun and a few candid words.
Comedy writers, whose job it is to find the truth in the joke and the joke in the truth, are more reliable guides to the times than the prognosticating pundits on Sunday morning and cable news shows. (They’re not journalists, they’ll tell you.) Of course, if satire could save the world, The Onion wouldn’t still be repeating its headline about the 2014 mass shooting: “‘It Can’t Be Stopped,’ Says the Only Country Where It Happens Regularly” (37 times through Sept. 4). But as individuals, it can get us through one day and into the next, giving voice to our outrage and making us laugh, too.
