Chris Fleming’s Experimental New Play Won Late Night This Week
It’s the week before Thanksgiving break, and everyone is getting kind of rowdy. Brian Stack is dressing like a performance-art phreak on The Late Show; Andy Cohen is spoiling Wicked; and Seth Meyers is day drinking outside the confines of the sketch about day drinking. The only guy fully on the ball is Ronan Farrow, who told the Daily Show audience that the easiest way to beat most spyware is just to do a hard restart of your phone every day. That’s service journalism.
It’s been a long month, and next year will be a long year, so forgive the world of late-night television if they’re getting a little silly with it this week. Here’s who got the silliest.
5. Lacey Chabert Remembers Everything
Many actors retain very little about the roles they’ve performed. Gwyneth Paltrow, famously, has no idea how many Marvel movies she’s been in or what they’re about. It’s especially fair to forget all this junk if you’re as booked and busy as the darling of holiday movies, Lacey Chabert. Who has room for last month’s “I’m opening a cupcake store in a small town, but I can’t find love, and also it’s Christmas!” plot when you have to learn lines about a new one? Lacey Chabert, that’s who! Does she have an eidetic memory like Marilu Henner? Or is she just good at her job? We may never know — until a handsome snowman can get the truth out of her.
4. Jon Stewart Pushes Back
Jon Stewart’s entire Monday episode of The Daily Show was a great model for checking untested narratives. A big talking point of the pundit class is that the Democrats lost the presidential election because they “went woke.” Seems unlikely, given all the Cheneys involved in the Harris campaign, but go off. It was something Stewart’s guest, Ruy Teixeira, seemed to agree with. Stewart pushed back on that in his “Headlines” segment, and he pushed back on it IRL while interviewing Teixeira. Everyone goes on late night for softballs, so shout-out to Stewart for standing firm.
3. Stephen Colbert and Josh Brolin Have a Read-Off
Josh Brolin came on The Late Show with some real rambunctious energy — and Stephen Colbert met him there. First, they talked about the TV-star late-night entrance versus the movie-star late-night entrance. (I love whenever Colbert talks about this.) Then Brolin made a big show of plugging Colbert’s book while he was, in fact, supposed to be plugging his own book. Then he made his book and Colbert’s book fight, trading quote for quote to see who is more interesting. Colbert was game the whole way, an agile scene partner. It’s in weird moments like this that Colbert really thrives. I’m not urging stars to bring weird energy to The Late Show, but I’m not not doing that.
2. The Tonight Show’s Army of Quick-Change Artists
There are a lot of Tonight Show sketches that rely on Jimmy Fallon (and sometimes his guests) changing quickly into little outfits. For the first time that I can remember, we got a peek behind the curtain at how these quick changes are done. I had no idea how many dressers it takes to get any one 30 Rock performer into a bullshit outfit. Amazing! I could watch it all day. The piece was about the proliferation of look-alike contests lately, with Fallon as the one looking like folks. And he mimed most ably. But the true stars were the four to seven dressers it took for each outfit. Can’t say how many there actually were — they moved too fast to be counted.
1. Chris Fleming, Auteur
Every time Chris Fleming is on After Midnight, he does a little play. This is a great use of the show’s time, of the viewer’s time, and of Fleming’s time. For this installment, the conceit was Fleming performing a Stomp-esque show using Taylor Tomlinson’s jokes as the rhythmic element. Lisa Gilroy wore a mustache and it all made total sense, I promise.
The point of a show like After Midnight is to introduce America to as many quirky little guys (gender-neutral term) as possible in order to get those little guys’ booking fees up sky-high. It’s a showcase, and truly, thank you, CBS, for letting Fleming shine on your shiny-floor TV show.