On September 8th, Stephen Colbert, former host of Comedy Central’s The Colbert Report, was officially handed the reins of CBS’s The Late Show, which had been hosted by David Letterman since 1983.  In recent years, old favorites like Letterman, Jay Leno, and Craig Ferguson have been leaving the late night timeslot to make room for fresh faces Jimmy Fallon, James Corden, and Seth Meyers, and as a result, a new age of late night comedy is being ushered in.

Overall, these new takes on the late night format have been well received, but as with everything new, there are critics.  Andrés du Bouchet, who writes for Conan O’Brien’s show on TBS, vented on Twitter about his wish for a “shakeup” in comedy. “No celebrities, no parodies, no pranks, no mash-ups or hashtag wars….Prom King Comedy. That’s what I call all this.”  Most of his tweets seemed to be directed at Jimmy Fallon, the host of NBC’s Tonight Show, who is known for having his guests participate in games like Catchphrase, Word Sneak, and Lip Sync Battle, the former becoming so popular that it now has a show of its own on Spike.  While there is nothing inherently wrong with these games that do indeed contain a large amount of entertainment value, they mean that there is less time for the guests to be interviewed.  The format allows for only a handful of minutes of conversation with each guests, and may not be the best approach to a show that is considered a “talk show”.

Enter Colbert.  In his first week of shows, he managed to do something extraordinarily average: have honest, no frills conversations.  This is not to say that the interviews were void of humor, but rather, they were genuine.  The Late Show guests so far have ranged from George Clooney and Amy Schumer to Jeb Bush and Joe Biden.  While it would seem funny people Clooney and Schumer would fare far better than politicians Bush and Biden on a comedy show, which, as far as entertainment value goes, they did, having non-show business people on a very show business show allows viewers to see a different side of them.  After its airing, Biden’s interview has gained a lot of recognition as being more focused on grief and being human than politics.

There is no way to say that one late night show is definitely better than another, but there is no doubt that each has their own unique appeal, and Colbert’s just might be the one that brings disenchanted late night fans tired of “prom king comedy” back to the timeslot.  While viewers of Fallon’s show may attribute their choice to his goofy lovability, those tired of his apparent love for everyone can take comfort in the way Colbert approached his interview with George Clooney, where Colbert, not wanting the populus to assume that everyone in the industry got along and talk shows were just an excuse to hang out with their friends, assured the audience that he and Clooney were not friends, and had hardly even met each other before the taping of the show.  Colbert even got Clooney a paperweight inscribed with the statement “I don’t know you”.  

Late night talk shows are most likely the best representation of the current state of comedy on network television, as, unlike most network shows, they are written the morning that the show is taped, allowing them to fluctuate with whatever is popular at the time.  The addition of Stephen Colbert to the late night landscape is just one more outlet for pop culture and current events, and a unique addition at that, one that is sure to stand out from both previous and current late night hosts.