How Four Late-Night Comedy Shows Signed Off For Now

The dizzying pace of the past week’s events included limitations on gatherings, closing of restaurants and bars in an increasing number of locations, wild fluctuations in the stock market, and a widespread sense of uncertainty. The world today is vastly different than the one we knew only a week ago. If you’re like me, you often turn to comedy shows to make sense of such upheaval. During election season, impeachment, and the increasing polarization of the nation, comedy was there to make sense of it all. But now, when we need it most, late-night comedy, often the beacon of common sense, has left the scene. That’s a good thing because it signals the need for all of us to experience inconvenience during this challenging time. But all the same, we’ll miss it, and we’ll be grateful when late-night comedy returns.

Only two weeks ago, Elizabeth Warren was onstage high-fiving and hugging members of the Saturday Night Live cast. From my vantage point in Seattle, where the crisis essentially began in the U.S., I raised an eyebrow but didn’t think too much about it. Today, such actions on national television would be unthinkable. As detached and cynical as comedy can sometimes appear, there was a sincere desire to do the right thing and come together as an audience fighting a scourge as many of the top late-night shows signed off this week. 

This week, I watched the final episodes from Samantha Bee, Stephen Colbert, Seth Meyers, and John Oliver. Each was revealing in its way. There was a looseness and sincerity to the shows that made them compelling television and will likely make them memorable shows to watch long after the crisis is over. 

First up on Wednesday night was Full Frontal with Samantha Bee. On her TBS show, she performed before writers and staff who were seated at great distances from each other in the studio audience. She used her show to take on racist reactions to the virus, the challenges of the gig economy, Texas residents who aren’t too happy about The Wall, the Harvey Weinstein verdict, and some weird French people who broke the world record for dressing as Smurfs.

The following night, Stephen Colbert took a different tack. He started his show by running past empty seats, mock high-fiving missing audience members in his trademark method, an opening gambit which we’ll likely never see again. It turned out that we were watching his taped rehearsal. During the show itself, he told his producer that he didn’t see any reason to tape the real show since there wasn’t an audience. His occasional sip of whiskey from under his desk might also have convinced him that he might not be quite ready to get through another full sixty minutes, given the fact that there would be no audience. 

Colbert, and many of the other shows, appeared to have plans to tape in front of an audience through the end of last week. But events moved so fast that they taped their no-audience shows instead. As bans on gatherings grew ever-tighter, the shows, responsibly, elected to cease taping altogether. A difficult decision was in some ways made for them by events since the effect of the audience-less shows was more eerie than humorous. Turns out you need an audience to fully convey the late-night comedy experience. Without the laughs, a monologue is just a lecture with weird inflections.

Also on Thursday, Seth Meyers appeared to come in to the studio solely to tape his “Closer Look” monologue. Wearing a casual long-sleeved shirt instead of his trademark suit, Meyers told a few jokes, to laughter from his writers, the only members of the audience. One notable comment involved the surreal nature of Sarah Palin’s appearance on The Masked Singer just before Trump gave his primetime oval office speech.

Finally, on Sunday night, John Oliver taped his HBO show Last Week Tonight from an “undisclosed location” since the CBS Broadcast Center in New York where the show usually taped had reported confirmed cases of coronavirus. Oliver, with no audience, not even staffers, did his usual survey of some of the events of the week, as is his show’s wont, but also spent a good deal of time going over things we can do to help the situation, featuring a TikTok sensation of a hamster showing viewers how to wash hands for 20 seconds, as the CDC recommends. Oliver signed off by saying: “Take care of yourself, take care of each other, and we will be back in some form at some time in the future. Until then, stay safe. Goodnight.”

The last time so many late-night comedy shows went dark was during the period after 9/11 when America was in mourning and jokey talk shows seemed frivolous and disrespectful. Most shows returned after a week hiatus when the need for communal experiences outweighed the need for mourning. The first few shows were often somber. But the act of coming together again helped heal a nation.

With the Titans of comedy dark during this time of uncertainty, the stage has been set for new comic voices to keep us distracted and informed while we hunker down as a nation. With kids home from school and college, a new generation of YouTube and TikTok stars have their opportunity. When the time is right, the late-night giants will return, and the healing will begin again.