Late-Night Comedians Return Via YouTube

The country made a deal during the Trump Presidency: he can say all kinds of outrageous stuff as long as the rest of us had late-night comedy hosts to interpret and make sense of it. The deal was far from perfect, but it seemed to keep the country moving forward during a presidency that has never attained majority popular support.

With the advent of social distancing and shelter-in-place orders of the past several weeks, part of that bargain has gone away. Late night comedy signed off two weeks ago. In its place, like green shoots and leaves after a volcano devastates a forest, some late-night hosts are re-emerging in fits and starts on Twitter, and especially YouTube. The result, as uneven and unprofessional as might be expected, is a welcome reminder of normalcy, and possibly even a peek into how things will be different when comedy is able to return in the future.

Some late-night hosts are re-emerging on Twitter and YouTube

The decimation has been complete for live and live-to-tape comedy. The panoply of shows on hiatus includes The Late Show with Stephen Colbert; The Tonight Show starring Jimmy Fallon; Jimmy Kimmel Live!; The Late Late Show with James Corden; Real Time with Bill Maher; The Daily Show with Trevor Noah; Conan; and Full Frontal with Samantha Bee. On top of the on-air shows that have been shuttered, with pilot season just concluding, there are undoubtedly many more shows that will simply not make it to air, or will wait until the crisis has passed to begin broadcasting.

There are so many questions that must be answered before the shows can return. Will there be a studio audience? When can crew members congregate together on set or in a writers’ room again? Does it feel right to have some public events while the audience may still be dwelling in place?

Still, comedy springs eternal, and despite the uneven results of the homespun attempts to return to air by some of the late-night titans, being able to get their unique angles on an event that all Americans are suffering through at the same time is a boon. In addition to seeing their Zoom-filtered faces, we also get a rare chance to peek into their homes, which is revealing for each host’s personality. Here’s a quick rundown of how some of the top stars are handling their digital presence:

The Tonight Show—Jimmy Fallon has opted to make his return a family affair. In a memorable segment with Lin-Manuel Miranda, a few of Fallon’s kids climb all over him (and slide down a very cool in-home slide) while another holds the camera and gives commentary. This period in American media history is like one long extended “celebrities are just like us!” segment. Fallon’s rec room has a 50s diner vibe, which perfectly suits his schtick.

The Late Show—Colbert has produced two types of videos so far (since his staff was officially on vacation the second week of his show’s shutdown). It will remain to be seen how he decides to move forward. The first style involved him giving his monolog somewhere in or around his house: in the bathtub, by the firepit, then tossing to music director Jon Batiste to play music from his home. This served as an intro to rerun segments from earlier in the year. The result was charming, picking up millions of views on YouTube.

Colbert’s second style, which appeared to have no staff involvement, featured how-to tips, and were hilarious in their own way. He shows us how to change a bicycle innertube and walks us through his process of shaving his beard. Dumb, but fun. His home seems to be standard colonial fare, with garage and backyard that would make a 60s dad proud.

Jimmy Kimmel Live!—Jimmy Kimmel has also made his show a family affair, with a cute homespun open featuring the artwork and voices of (presumably) his kids. So far, Kimmel has also added an interview segment to his YouTube videos, even interviewing leading Democratic presidential contender Joe Biden. Kimmel tapes most of his segments from an airy breezeway, which adds to the breezy nature of his clips.

Late Night—Seth Meyers has been doing “A Closer Look” type news satire since he hosted “Weekend Update” on Saturday Night Live. He’s back doing it again from his house—first from an echoey hallway, then from a book-lined library. Image and sound became incrementally better with each taping, and it’s easy to imagine his style lending itself best to the transition to online only. What’s missing, of course, is the audience, and since so many of his bits involve clever lines that pay off as he looks ironically to the camera while the audience roars, the result of his isolation YouTube style feels more like 50s French beat poetry than comedy. No matter. The jokes are still funny and his uncanny ability to pull not only the truth from a circuitous presidential press conference, but also the motivation that caused the mistruth in the first place, is a necessary feature for millions of Americans to make sense of the prevaricator in chief.

Samantha Bee has returned with interview segments and a monolog shot in the woods by her husband, Jason Jones. Trevor Noah is doing interviews, notably with Dr. Anthony Fauci on his newly-named Daily Social Distancing Show, and Conan O’Brien is reporting on the ground. Little by little, we’re seeing most, if not all, of the most popular late-night comedians returning in digital form.

In this precarious time when so few of the things we were certain about only a few weeks ago have vanished or been altered, seeing our favorite raconteurs trying to make sense of this with us feels more necessary that we might have known. That they are parents, spouses, sons and daughters who have rec rooms, hallways, garages, and broken bikes like the rest of us, is somehow reassuring. We’re all in this together, so at least let’s have a laugh.