It’s 1 a.m., just after David Letterman said his final good-bye to television some 33 years after he began his run on the late-night talk show circuit and sadness is prevalent.
I’m most definitely a Generation X member, someone who was a child when Letterman’s star was shining the brightest, when he was on after the incomparable Johnny Carson — too late for me to enjoy. It was only after he went to CBS that I found out about him, after he was kicked to the curb by NBC executives who did everything they could to make Jay Leno the new host of The Tonight Show when Carson eventually retired, even while Johnny was hopeful that it would be David who took over.
I was nine years old when The Late Show began on CBS, and my folks, God love ’em, were such fans of both Carson and Letterman that they understood sometimes when it was okay to let me stay up later than I should to laugh at jokes I was way too young to understand. Or to watch a Top Ten list because counting down and waiting for when Dave paused for the good lines made me feel smart for laughing with everyone else. I was most definitely a Letterman hipster.
Perhaps most importantly to anyone who was a fan of Letterman while they were growing up, he always seemed like someone who was never trying to be better than who he was. Among those who have eulogized his television career over the past few weeks, many noticed how he always seemed to loathe the idea of his show actually existing to an extent. The disgust that built up with him not getting The Tonight Show stayed with him, as heavy a grudge as anything else one could hold (which is something he’d play up whenever Leno was in the news). Even when he played that up, he was understated. He was sly, but never sneaky. But he would also be the smartest guy in the room disguised as the village idiot.
Letterman was a Midwesterner, just like Carson, and he played that role to perfection in his unique combination of sarcasm and malaise, yet he pulled it off so easily you’d think he genuinely didn’t care. Schlock passed on at its highest functioning level.
I’m mostly sad because the last true connection to the golden age of late-night television is finally gone. Before Leno and Letterman duked it out for Carson’s spot, it was Carson who took over for Jack Parr, who in turn was the successor to Steve Allen. Some 60 years after The Tonight Show first made waves, nobody thought anyone could have been better than Johnny. Yet here we are and there was probably nobody better than Dave.
There’s no denying that the late-night format has run its course in many ways. It’s become derivative to see a comedian do an opening monologue, then sit behind a desk and have a celebrity sit on a chair next to him (never a her unless she’s a guest host) and tell stories that have been carefully crafted to fit whatever they’re shilling. It’s become so derivative there’s an entire series dedicated to making fun of the talk show genre (and it happens to be brilliant, as well). Amy Schumer’s been making waves in recent weeks with basically every sketch she’s made on Inside Amy Schumer, and front and center was her making fun of being on a late-night talk show mere weeks after being on with Letterman.
Even as well as Jimmy Fallon is doing as the new host of The Tonight Show and with Conan O’Brien’s continuing success on TBS, the idea of sitting down in front of the TV at 11:35 p.m. to watch an hour-long talk show just doesn’t appeal as much as it once did. In one instance, it’s the basic evolution of television, but for all the guff that late-night television has taken, there were probably fewer things more impressive when it was working well.
Letterman’s self-effacing humor rang true in his final speech when he said that over the 6,000+ shows he’s did, only a few were any good. However, the highlights were immense. When Steve Martin came on a couple weeks ago, they replayed an incredible bit the two did where they had a gay vacation together.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oS4HVyk2mnQ
And on his final show, they ran what might have been my all-time favorite Letterman gag when he was a drive-thru employee at a Taco Bell.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ud3_uFM8iI
The highlights that are out there of Letterman at his best are easy to come by and are basically too many to list. He’s been a part of the television canon for so long that it’s just assumed he’ll come up with greatness on a semi-regular basis. Considering how television has evolved (or devolved, depending on your outlook) when it comes to job security, that’s as cushy a thing to have in that business.
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It’s now 8:30 a.m., the morning after Dave’s final show, and the cadre of support for his final show and incredible career speaks to everything he’s done for television, especially in the loyalty department. Biff Henderson, his stage manager who he used in many famous sketches throughout the years, has been with him even longer than Dave’s done late-night. He’s done more to get bit players on television than perhaps anybody in the history of the genre (BUD MELMAN, BABY!). We’re talking about someone who was able to send his MOTHER to the OLYMPICS, for crying out loud. AND SHE INTERVIEWED THE FIRST LADY!
I sat with my dad last night and watched Dave’s swan song, and I was immediately transported back to my youth when it was him and my mom sitting there with me explaining some of the jokes I couldn’t understand. As I said earlier, Dave’s Top Tens were king, and in the seemingly endless war between him and Leno, I always went back to what became the most seminal moment in that war that cemented Dave’s legacy in a way Leno’s never was, even with The Tonight Show in his possession. It was because during one Top Ten in particular, it was Carson who handed Letterman the proverbial torch in what ended up being his final television appearance ever.
It was a HUGE deal at the time, and over 20 years after its occurrence, it’s still my barometer for what Letterman meant to me as a child. It was The King descendant handing off the reins to who he thought was The New King. And to me, it was the last time a transition of that magnitude actually meant as much in real life as it was perceived in television.
Of course, the older I grew, the less I started watching. We all did, to an extent. Other things became more important, and although you’d tune in from time to time, the Internet was here and Late Night was Old Television and so on and so forth. We figured that Dave had lost his fastball, when in reality, he picked his spots and did it brilliantly; he became Greg Maddux. A lot of the bits that made him famous pre-YouTube became just another short piece amongst a million short comedy pieces when the digital media age came upon us. But when something was good, it was better than the rest in many cases, just because he had been doing it for so long that he knew what greatness looked like.
That’s what made his victory lap over the past few weeks even sweeter. The time to reflect back on what he did in his 22 years as host of The Late Show, the 12 years before that on NBC, and inventing new things for late-night television with The Late Late Show showed just how influential, timeless and superb his material was. Old Television being what it was, Dave being the last holdover from that generation and still finding a way to finish off his run like he did is remarkable. I mean, what other late-night host saw his fellow hosts either pre-empt the show or tell them mid-show to turn over to watch his finale? In this day and age when cord-cutting means TV ratings are as important as ever?
And had Dave known it was happening, he would have asked them all what the hell they were doing and why they’d do such a thing. Because that’s just who he was. Yet there we were, the millions who grew up with him or were influenced by him or were reminded of the days when being The Man in Late Night meant you were the King of All Television. Dave will always be The Man. Long live The King.
