YMMV / The Late Show with Stephen Colbert

• Ass Pull: "Stephen Colbert's identical twin cousin from Philadelphia, Stephen Colbert", whose incredibly convoluted and contrived backstory is used to justify bringing back the Colbert character without actually using him. Of course, they didn't have much of an alternative. Blame the lawyers.
• Awesome Ego: He may be out of character nowadays, and it's mostly played for laughs, but the real Stephen Colbert's ego is just as big as it was on the Report. The studio is festooned with digital projections of Stephen's face and the giant "COLBERT" sign outside the Ed Sullivan Theater that dwarfs the main marquee!
  Stephen: I used to play a narcissistic conservative pundit. Now I'm just a narcissist.
• Awesome Music:
  • The show's first live performance of "Everyday People" with Jon Batiste and Stay Human, Brittany Howard, Buddy Guy, Aloe Blacc, Derek Trucks, Ben Folds, Kyle Resnick, Stephen Colbert, and Mavis Staples. The very definition.
  • The music that plays in the background whenever Stephen "takes the gloves off" and starts roasting a particular target.
  • The opening sketches for the start of the RNC and the DNC.
  • With the announcement happening that day, the show managed to quickly put together a tributary rendition of "Let's Dance" by El Vy and Stay Human in honor of David Bowie's passing.
  • The drum beat for the "Big Furry Hat" segments.
  • The Gorillaz perform Feel Good Inc, but without De La Soul on the rap portions. Instead Stephen himself steps in and kills it.
    Ladies, ponies, at the track, it's my mayonnaise attack!
  • The full version of the first opening theme is a chill, laid-back tune, perfect for settling in to watch the show.
• Crosses the Line Twice:
  • Well, when Stephen calls the sitting president of the United States only good for sucking Vladimir Putin's cock on live (albeit censored) national TV, and refused to apologize for it afterwards when it created a controversy, it's hard to argue that anything else is in effect.
  • After reading that the Royal Family is addressing Meghan Markle's accusations of racism privately, Stephen remarks "Prince Andrew has an island he goes to to address his privates".
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Laura Benanti as Melania Trump is a huge crowd favorite - she's not really with the show's own stable of actors, due primarily to her Broadway commitment, and when invited as a guest to talk about that, they veer into the subject of Melania eventually.
  • After the show started taping its episodes on quarantine due to the COVID-19 Pandemic, and especially after they were able to move back to the Ed Sullivan Theater (albeit taping on a recreation of Stephen's desk in the building rather than the set itself), Stephen's wife Evelyn (known as Evie) began to appear as the sole audience member (besides the crew). Fans were quickly won over by her genuine laughter at her husband's jokes (and their obvious love for each other), to the point of saying that they wouldn't mind if that becomes the show's format indefinitely. There was much rejoicing when Evie continued to make semi-regular appearances on the show after traditional taping was able to resume in 2021.
  • Louis Cato quickly won fans when he stepped in to lead Stay Human and established an easy rapport with Stephen when Jon Batiste was too busy with multiple projects in 2022. This resulted in a warm reception when it was announced that Louis would lead the band permanently.
• Establishing Character Moment.
  • Stephen's duet with John Legend on "America the Beautiful".
  • Stephen and Jack Black's universal All-American song "My Kind of America".
• Estrogen Brigade: The infamous Colbert Estrogen Brigade is as strong (and vocal) as ever, and the fact that Colbert gets to be himself — in all his adorkable glory — on this show has only provided more fuel to the fire.
• Fandom Heresy: The August 9, 2017 show saw Colbert calling the Doctor "Doctor Who" in an interview with David Tennant regarding his time on the show and opinions about the incoming Thirteenth Doctor Jodie Whittaker, a co-star on Broadchurch. ("You were the Tenth Doctor Who".) What makes it especially egregious is that Tennant himself didn't try to correct him. Not even the actor who played the Doctor knows if it's really incorrect to call the character "Doctor Who".^note Granted, the show itself has flip-flopped on this in their credits over the decades. Thankfully he'd fixed this by the time Jodie Whittaker herself appeared on the show.
• Fan Nickname: The Ed Sullivan Theater has been dubbed "Colbert Cathedral", referencing the stained glass and dome gracing the roof.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • Stephen opens his November 13, 2015 show with a joke about how he's "feeling great" even though it's Friday the 13th, noting that it's just an old superstition. Within hours of making those jokes, the city of Paris suffered its worst attack on French soil since World War II, in a series of terrorist acts which culminated in over a hundred people dead and hundreds more wounded, some critically, kicking off a media frenzy of wall-to-wall coverage still ongoing the Monday afterward. Stephen broke the news to his studio audience at the end of taping, when many things were still unknown or uncertain, and closed with simple condolences and a "Good night" choked with tears.
  • In 2019, the news that Kellyanne Conway was technically breaking the law by stating her Republican bias in her role of White House spokesman led to Stephen's audience seizing the "lock her up" chant from the Trump fanbase, which Stephen was against. Not long after, the Trump fanbase would come up with yet another one, the "send her back" chant directed at Congresswoman Ilhan Omar.
  • During an episode covering Trump's phone call and later meeting with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Stephen made a crack about javelin missiles, suggesting they would be upgraded to shot-puts "if Russian tanks roll into Kyiv". From the same episode, Stephen had the theme from Curb Your Enthusiasm play over a shot of Zelenskyy's shocked expression at Trump's suggestion that he and Putin could "get together and solve your problem" (meaning, at the time, the war in the Donbas). It's a lot harder to laugh at after Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, coming perilously close to the Ukrainian capital.
  • In the last show of 2020, there was the animated segment "Twas The Coup Before Christmas", which satirized Donald Trump's refusal to acknowledge the results of the 2020 presidential election by having Trump try to steal Christmas, culminating with a showdown in Washington D.C.. On January 6, 2021, Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol, trying to stop Congress from officially confirming Joe Biden's victory. Of course, this led to "A Conspiracy Carol" in December, with Santa's naughty and nice list taking place of the votes for Joe Biden.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • One 2017 episode had the show's Melania Trump (Laura Benanti) humorously comparing America having Donald Trump as President with her marriage to him, stating that America should honor having him as President, "no matter how often America fantasizes about being with Justin Trudeau," while clearly swooning and fawning over the latter. This was before a certain photo of the real Melania and Trudeau◊ at the 2019 G7 summit led to jokes about her swooning over him.
  • After it was announced that out of the massive field of Democratic presidential primary candidates for the 2020 elections (of over two dozen) only 20 would qualify for the first televised debate, leaving some candidates out, Montana Governor Steve Bullock, one of the rejected candidates, appeared on the show for a debate hosted by Stephen (the joke being that Stephen held a debate with several Steve Bullocks). A few days afterwards, one of the candidates who appeared on the first debate, Eric Swalwell, dropped out of the race, and it was later determined that Bullock had qualified to take his place in later debates, so he got to be on a real debate after all.
  • A December 2016 episode, made just a month after Donald Trump was elected president, had Stephen convene the nation for a "family meeting" where he and his guest, then-Vice President Joe Biden, talked to the audience in the style of a father having a talk with his son, with the joke being that, while they didn't outright say it, it was clear they were referring to the uncertainty that followed Trump's election; at one point Biden says "It's not permanent. It'll be over in four years, maybe eight." As it turns out, he was correct on the first guess — because Vice President Biden became President Biden after defeating Trump in the 2020 election.
• Spiritual Successor: To both The Colbert Report and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. The show preserves a lot of the style of Colbert's previous show, albeit with Colbert being himself instead of playing a character. Jon Stewart also serves as executive producer, as he did for the Report.
• Suspiciously Similar Song: The main hook of the opening theme is almost identical to the "whoa whoa who-oah" Scatting refrain of "Things Can Only Get Better" by Howard Jones.
• Sweet Dreams Fuel:
  • Stephen duets with James Taylor on "You Can Close Your Eyes".
  • Ziggy Marley, Jon Batiste, and Chance the Rapper covering the theme song to Arthur.
• Win Back the Crowd: CBS was concerned that Colbert was not producing enough "viral" moments, and brought in Chris Licht, the former producer of the network's morning show, to serve as an executive producer. The mere notion of bringing in an EP with an experience in news was enough of an indication that CBS wanted Colbert to steer back towards the more topical feel of The Daily Show and the Report. The episodes during the Republican and Democratic conventions also featured significant appearances by Jon Stewart and a brief revival of Colbert's previous persona — events which may have been intended to win back those who were fans of Colbert and Stewart's previous programs.