He came, we saw, he was lame. He was only mildly funny and in fairness, obviously nervous.
In the annals of American network late-night TV – an arena already over-studied – Stephen Colbert's debut on Tuesday night was a massive event. On late-night network TV these days it isn't hard to make a seismic impact. It's pretty tame territory.
And Colbert's debut in the slot vacated by David Letterman was very tame. Anyone who wondered if Colbert could be successful without his maniacal Colbert Report persona was left wondering if this adventure into mainstream TV might be a giant mistake.
Of course it is always unfair to be definitive about anyone's first-day performance on the job, but in show business, it's the show that matters. And that was at times a show painful to watch.
Clearly running on adrenaline and nerves, Colbert went for the big and broad comedy that is a staple of late-night. Where his gig on Comedy Central as an idiotic right-wing ranter was small-scale satire elevated to genius by his persistence and uncanny resemblance to very real ranters such as Bill O'Reilly, hosting on CBS at 11:35 p.m. is very, very large-scale. And on the evidence of one show, Colbert has a lot of work to do to match ambition to reality.
After the many months of prep and rehearsal that must have gone into The Late Show with Stephen Colbert it was odd to see how unfocused it was and the jittery state of the host. There is still a terrible confusion about whom Stephen Colbert is, as himself, working as a TV host. He opened with a beautifully surreal segment, singing The Star Spangled Banner in various locations with various people. Then it was disconcertingly ordinary – the host enters the studio and does a monologue.
As monologues go it was amateur-hour. And made more strangely so by the audience chanting "Stephen! Stephen!" in the way they did, mockingly, for the old Colbert persona. Eventually George Clooney appeared as the first guest and a cringe-inducing segment ensued. There followed an unfathomable, long bit of lame comedy in which Colbert addressed a prop amulet. Then an orgy of Oreo-eating while making jokes about Donald Trump that seemed strangely dated and stale. David Letterman would never have stooped to such lowbrow antics.
Only when interviewing Jeb Bush did Colbert seem to find a groove. His direct questions were snarky and, even better, were directly skeptical. Again, though, the question arose – Who is this Stephen Colbert? Is he in-character or authentic? He said to Bush, "There is a non-zero chance that I would vote for you." But then there was an insertion of Colbert's family into the segment and an awkward acknowledgement that not everyone in his family shares his loathing of Republicans and right-wing cant. It seemed to be an early appeal for tolerance of his sins in his old satiric persona. In the end, Jeb Bush got away easily from being truly punctured.
Then came the climactic, chaotic musical number, a rendition of Everyday People that also seemed part of a cringe-inducing request to a mainstream audience to forgive Colbert's history as a deeply political comedian. The studio audience adored it but, watching on TV, one was left with the troubling feeling that if you weren't in the studio, you weren't getting the point.
All such TV shows take time to find their mark and to establish reliable routines and a set of inside-jokes that please the viewers. The trick is to establish a sort-of members-only club that viewers enjoy being part of, and to establish the feeling of camaraderie. To do that, the host needs to know exactly who he is every night for that hour of TV performance.
Right now it's not clear that Stephen Colbert knows who he is on CBS at 11:35 p.m. He'd better find out fast because there is plenty of competition – shows more assured, more confident and far funnier than the mess Colbert hosted in his debut performance in the big leagues.