2025-07-22 06:00:13.271

A wave of comedy's biggest names, including Jimmy Fallon, Seth Meyers, John Oliver, Jon Stewart, and Adam Sandler, flocked to 'The Late Show' to support Stephen Colbert following the unexpected announcement of its cancellation. The show, nominated for multiple Emmys just days prior, was axed by CBS despite being top-rated. The celebrity audience participated in various comedic skits, including musical performances by Weird Al Yankovic and Lin-Manuel Miranda, and humorous interactions between audience members like Andy Cohen and Anderson Cooper, and Fallon and Meyers. Colbert himself addressed the cancellation, jokingly blaming 'cancel culture' and questioning the network's reasoning, especially given the show's high ratings and the significant financial losses reported. He pointedly referenced CBS's $16 million settlement with Donald Trump, hinting at possible misallocation of funds. While many stars showed their support, Jimmy Kimmel was absent but sent a supportive message online. The episode ended with a pointed jab at Paramount, CBS's parent company, showcasing a cartoon President Trump holding a Paramount sign.

2025-07-19 18:01:06.876

Stephen Colbert's run as host of CBS's "Late Show" will end in May 2024. The announcement came as a surprise, especially given the show's success in ratings since 2017. While CBS attributed the cancellation to financial pressures, many suspect the timing is connected to a recent settlement between Paramount and Donald Trump, and Colbert's frequent criticism of the former president. Fellow late-night hosts like Jimmy Kimmel and Jimmy Fallon expressed shock and disappointment. Senator Elizabeth Warren even suggested the cancellation might be politically motivated. Colbert himself expressed gratitude to CBS and his staff, while the studio audience reacted with boos upon hearing the news.

2025-07-18 12:00:50.089

CBS is canceling “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” next May, shuttering a decades-old TV institution in a changing media landscape and removing from air one of President Donald Trump’s most prominent and persistent late-night critics. Thursday’s announcement followed Colbert’s criticism on Monday of a settlement between Trump and Paramount Global, parent company of CBS, over a “60 Minutes” story. Colbert told his audience at New York’s Ed Sullivan Theater that he had learned Wednesday night that after a decade on air, “next year will be our last season. ... It’s the end of ‘The Late Show’ on CBS. I’m not being replaced. This is all just going away.” The audience responded with boos and groans. “Yeah, I share your feelings,” the 61-year-old comic said. Three top Paramount and CBS executives praised Colbert’s show as “a staple of the nation’s zeitgeist” in a statement that said the cancellation “is purely a financial decision against a challenging backdrop in late night. It is not related in any way to the show’s performance, content or other matters happening at Paramount.” In his Monday monologue, Colbert said he was “offended” by the $16 million settlement reached by Paramount, whose pending sale to Skydance Media needs the Trump administration’s approval. He said the technical name in legal circles for the deal was “big fat bribe.” Colbert took over “The Late Show” in 2015 after becoming a big name in comedy and news satire working with Jon Stewart on “The Daily Show” and hosting “The Colbert Report,” which riffed on right-wing talk shows. The most recent ratings from Nielsen show Colbert gaining viewers so far this year and winning his timeslot among broadcasters, with about 2.417 million viewers across 41 new episodes. On Tuesday, Colbert’s “Late Show” landed its sixth nomination for a Primetime Emmy Award for outstanding talk show. It won a Peabody Award in 2021. David Letterman began hosting “The Late Show” in 1993. When Colbert took over, he deepened its engagement with politics. Alongside musicians and movie stars, Colbert often welcomes politicians to his couch. Democratic Sen. Adam Schiff of California was a guest on Thursday night. Schiff said on X that “if Paramount and CBS ended the Late Show for political reasons, the public deserves to know. And deserves better.” Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts released a similar statement. Colbert’s counterpart on ABC, Jimmy Kimmel, posted on Instagram “Love you Stephen” and directed an expletive at CBS. Actor and producer Jamie Lee Curtis noted in an interview in Los Angeles that the cancellation came as the House passed a bill approving Trump’s request to cut funding to public broadcasters NPR and PBS. “They’re trying to silence people, but that won’t work. Won’t work. We will just get louder,” said Curtis, who has previously criticized Trump and is set to visit Colbert’s show in coming days. Colbert has long targeted Trump. The guests on his very first show in September 2015 were actor George Clooney and Jeb Bush, who was then struggling in his Republican presidential primary campaign against Trump. “Gov. Bush was the governor of Florida for eight years,” Colbert told his audience. “And you would think that that much exposure to oranges and crazy people would have prepared him for Donald Trump. Evidently not.” Late-night TV has been facing economic pressures for years; ratings and ad revenue are down and many young viewers prefer highlights online, which networks have trouble monetizing. CBS also recently canceled host Taylor Tomlinson’s “After Midnight,” which aired after “The Late Show.” Still, Colbert had led the network late-night competition for years. And while NBC has acknowledged economic pressures by eliminating the band on Seth Meyers’ show and cutting one night of Jimmy Fallon’s “The Tonight Show,” there had been no such visible efforts at “The Late Show.” Colbert’s relentless criticism of Trump, his denunciation of the settlement, and the parent company’s pending sale can’t be ignored, said Bill Carter, author of “The Late Shift.” “If CBS thinks people are just going to swallow this, they’re really deluded,” Carter said. Andy Cohen, who began his career at CBS and now hosts “Watch What Happens Live,” said in an interview: “It is a very sad day for CBS that they are getting out of the late-night race. I mean, they are turning off the lights after the news.”

2025-07-18 06:00:35.074

CBS is canceling "The Late Show With Stephen Colbert" next May, ending a decades-long run. The announcement followed Colbert's criticism of a $16 million settlement between Trump and Paramount Global (CBS's parent company) over a "60 Minutes" story. Colbert called the settlement a "big fat bribe." Paramount and CBS executives stated the cancellation was a purely financial decision unrelated to the show's performance or content. However, Colbert's outspoken criticism of Trump and the timing of the cancellation, amidst a pending sale of Paramount to Skydance Media requiring Trump administration approval, has fueled speculation. Despite recent ratings successes and Emmy nominations, the cancellation has drawn significant backlash from politicians, fellow late-night hosts, and celebrities, with accusations of political motivations. The cancellation also comes as the House passed a bill to cut funding to public broadcasters NPR and PBS. Late-night TV faces economic pressures, with declining ratings and ad revenue, and many younger viewers preferring online content. However, Colbert's show had been a consistent leader in its timeslot. The situation has raised questions about the future of late-night television and the potential influence of political factors on network decisions.

2025-07-16 12:00:28.114

Trainwreck, Netflix's new anthology documentary series, is a surprise summer hit. Unlike traditional documentaries, it focuses on entertaining, controversial real-life events, from the Astroworld tragedy to the 'poop cruise' and Rob Ford's crack scandal. The series' success is attributed to its bingeable format (short, 45-minute episodes released weekly), focus on relatable chaos and nostalgia, and its ability to blend scandal with famous figures, however fleeting their fame. Inspired by the success of Tiger King, Trainwreck prioritizes entertainment over in-depth analysis, leading to criticism of trivializing real human tragedies. While criticized for sacrificing context for entertainment, the series' popularity highlights a shift in documentary programming towards easily digestible, engaging content, raising questions about the future of the genre.

2025-06-26 12:00:38.373

The Bear, the hit FX show, has returned for its fourth season, but it's not the same show it used to be. Gone is the relentless, heart-stopping drama that defined its earlier seasons. Instead, season four focuses more on character development and relationships, exploring the family dynamics and personal growth of its ensemble cast. While the restaurant itself still plays a central role, the narrative delves deeper into the characters' emotional lives and their struggles with self-improvement. The season starts with a countdown clock, giving the restaurant 1440 hours to save itself, but much of the plot unfolds outside the kitchen. The show's pace is slower, with extended montages and scenes focused on personal growth. While some may find this slower pace a deviation from the show's original formula, it allows for a more nuanced exploration of the characters' relationships and emotional journeys. A key element is the exploration of the extended family dynamic, showing how the bonds between friends and colleagues can be as significant as those of blood relatives. The season features a double-length episode centered on a family wedding, bringing together the main cast and several guest stars. While the initial episodes may feel slower, the season builds to a powerful and emotional climax, ultimately rewarding viewers with satisfying payoffs and character arcs. The show's creator, Christopher Storer, has taken a risk by shifting the focus, but the result is a more emotionally resonant and ultimately rewarding experience.

2025-06-26 00:00:20.851

A recent article discusses the oversaturation of wealthy characters in television shows. While initially, shows like Succession used wealth as a tool to explore themes of morality and the consequences of unchecked power, many shows now simply showcase lavish lifestyles without deeper meaning. The author observes a "slow creep of aspiration" in television, with increasingly opulent sets, clothing, and furnishings becoming a distraction from the plot. Shows like The Better Sister and Sirens are cited as examples of programs prioritizing visual luxury over compelling narratives. The author argues that depicting extreme wealth is acceptable if it serves a purpose, but when it becomes the sole focus, it creates a disconnect between the viewer and the characters' realities. The article concludes by calling for a halt to the "Selling Sunset-ification" of television, suggesting that the constant portrayal of upscale comfort doesn't inspire envy but rather a sense of detachment and a worry that these characters are completely out of touch with real life.

2025-05-13 12:00:29.738

What do couples counseling, a reality-singing competition, three cloned Yorkies, the content moderation of Paramount+ Germany and aviation safety all have in common? Virtually nothing, except the interest of television mastermind Nathan Fielder, who braids such disparate concepts together in the galaxy-brained second season of The Rehearsal. In just four episodes, the genre-bending show of elaborate simulations – essentially, extremely realistic role-playing in the name of preparing people for uncomfortable situations – has provided some of the most compelling, bizarre and dementedly brilliant scenes on television this year: a shy commercial airline pilot on a first date, accompanied by 20 actors mirroring his every move. Fielder, sporting his series uniform laptop harness, peering into a “wrecked” cockpit through pretend flames. The sight of the Lizard Lounge – an exact replica of Brooklyn’s Alligator Lounge, where Fielder was tending bar just last month – inside an exact replica of a section of Houston’s George Bush airport. And in a scene that was shockingly transgressive even for a docu-comedy auteur who has built a career on stretching the outer boundaries of reality television, the sight of Fielder, shaven, rubber-capped and diapered, suckling from the papier-mache teat of a puppet 50s housewife as part of a canonically insane, deeply sincere attempt to relive the life – and thus absorb the wisdom – of Captain Sully Sullenberger (of Tom Hanks biopic, crashing into the Hudson fame). If you haven’t seen The Rehearsal or aren’t acclimatized to Fielder’s ultra-cringe brand of experimental comedy, this likely sounds deeply off-putting, tedious and/or nonsensical. And it is – Fielder’s comedy, which could more accurately be described as Rube Goldberg-esque social experiments pursued to such absurd ends and with such deadpan narration as to produce laughter, is deliberately alienating. Zigging where others would zag, getting hung up on what others would glide past, building arcane in-jokes with long-simmering payoffs in the lane of erstwhile prestige TV dramas, it is television probing the human condition – how people think, why they behave a certain way, how they react to off-script social interactions – that is difficult to explain to other humans, difficult to follow and at times difficult to watch. And yet, it is appointment television, a truly singular meditation on artifice and authenticity, performance and sincerity, that has only improved with its second season. The Rehearsal’s first outing, which aired in 2022, introduced audiences to Fielder’s particular strand of neuroticism and apparent negotiating power at HBO; over six episodes, he constructed numerous simulations to approximate a potential real-life experience, primarily oriented around one woman’s deliberation over whether or not to have a child (in one of the show’s dicier and rightfully critiqued bits, Fielder played father to a real toddler). Fielder’s genius lies as much in episodic structure as in performance of his affectless producer persona – The Rehearsal marked a graduation, of sorts, from the harebrained business schemes of his Comedy Central series Nathan For You to becoming the Penn & Teller of television, pulling off sleights of hand while showing the strings and delivering the most monotone “abracadabra” imaginable, with a revelatory commitment to, as one fan put it, letting the camera linger long enough to reveal someone to be the weirdest person alive. With the six-episode second season, Fielder has leveled up the scale and stakes of his magic tricks, while further interrogating the production, assumptions and experiences that go into producing reality television, in service of a seemingly noble and topical aim: aviation safety. Fielder theorizes that the No 1 understudied cause of plane crashes is human error compounded by a breakdown communication in the cockpit. Co-pilots, for whatever reason, do not correct pilots when they make a mistake. Based on the number of real crashes Fielder’s team re-enacts, with obligatory virtual explosions, via flight simulator in the first episode, this seems to be a reasonable hypothesis. But to prove it, Fielder embarks on a characteristically intricate and involved series of experiments, from recreating the life conditions of a 2011 dog for its clone – the better to test nature v nurture – to encouraging a co-pilot to confront issues with his girlfriend during a simulated flight. There’s a certain hyper-competency pleasure to seeing these scenarios play out, to seeing someone’s imagination given this much financial and legal runway. But the series is most satisfying, to this TV fan, as a grand deconstruction of the rules of reality TV through elaborate role-play. The fourth episode dissects the series-long assumptions behind hiring actors to say certain lines of dialogue or perform certain scenarios, questioning the logic behind any suspension of disbelief. And one of the series’ many side quests include the elaborate staging of an aviation-themed singing competition modeled on Fielder’s experience as a 23-year-old junior producer for Canadian Idol – the northern spinoff of American Idol – where he was tasked with rejecting hopeful singers who did not exhibit “star potential”. The meditation on what makes would-be off-screen staff better at an unenviable task is at once fascinating and practical; theoretically, co-pilot judges – selected because they all share the quality of having not died in a plane crash – who practice rejection would be better prepared to stand up to stubborn captains. Wings of Voice has, like all of Fielder’s work, drawn criticism for psychological manipulation and false representation. On Monday, participant Lana Love broke a show NDA to claim that she lost $10,000 and was tricked by the shows producers into thinking she was on a real singing competition show and not, as Fielder calls it, “a singing competition as part of another TV show that has nothing to do with singing”. A level of manipulation is baked into the Fielderian worldview and school of acting, though I’d argue that, at this point, his methods are easily Googled and the subject of the show’s ultimate critique. The Rehearsal season two is, in my view, the least ethically fraught of Fielder’s output (and that includes his dramatic turn on HGTV satire The Curse). The show’s overarching illusion works because it serves an overall purpose more pointed than the original aim to “better understand the human condition” – it’s impossible to tell how serious Fielder is about changing Federal Aviation Administration training requirements around flight simulations to encourage better cockpit communications, but he seems serious enough about it to devote six episode of expensive television to the cause, with an added argument for pilots to get better therapy. And with a sly, deceptive heart. In the most recent episode, which aired on Sunday, Fielder helps a shy co-pilot named Colin improve his nonexistent romantic life by practicing a first date, with a twist. Having watched enough nature documentaries to know that some animals function well in packs, Fielder recruits a dozen or so actors to hover around Colin, mimicking every move and word, the idea being that it’s easier to do things when you’re not doing it by yourself. It’s very possible that the bashful, social cue-averse Colin was also an unstated actor. Fielder, of course, has his own motives as master puppeteer; the image of Colin sipping coffee echoed by a chorus of other faces does indeed make excellent television. But it also made me tear up, this surreal, distinctly Fielder hack to the unavoidable loneliness of being alive, to the universal discomfort of social awkwardness and personal insecurity. It fails, of course. The show purports to believe that all human behavior can be taught, that all emotions can be simulated and thus controlled. Both the magician and the audience know that life doesn’t work that way, but what a wonder to pretend otherwise.

2025-04-06 18:05:45.946

During a Weekend Update sketch, Ego Nwodim, playing the character 'Miss Eggy,' interacted with the live audience. The audience unexpectedly yelled out an expletive in response to Nwodim's prompts, shocking the cast. The moment was caught on the live Peacock stream but edited out of the NBC broadcast and social media uploads. The incident sparked a conversation on social media, with some viewers defending the audience's response.

2025-03-09 18:00:59.01

Sara Carlton, a contestant on Netflix's "Love Is Blind," stunned viewers and her groom-to-be, Ben Mezzenga, by calling off their wedding at the altar. Her reason? Mezzenga didn't align with her progressive views on issues such as Black Lives Matter, gay marriage, and the COVID-19 vaccine. Carlton expressed her desire for a partner who shared her "wavelength" on these topics. The online reaction was swift and largely critical of Carlton, with many praising Mezzenga for avoiding what they considered a relationship with someone focused on virtue signaling. Carlton later elaborated, citing Mezzenga's lack of strong opinions on Black Lives Matter, his church's views on gender identity, and his perceived lack of engagement with her progressive values as dealbreakers. Mezzenga, visibly upset, attempted to salvage the relationship, but Carlton remained unconvinced. The incident has ignited a significant online debate about political compatibility in relationships and the role of social issues in relationship choices.