Stephen Colbert’s final ‘Late Show’ wasn’t funny or emotional at all — just like his last 11 years
Stephen Colbert's final episode of 'The Late Show' aired without much humor or emotional resonance, mirroring the tone of his previous years. The show featured celebrity guests but failed to deliver memorable moments, with most jokes falling flat. Colbert's tenure has been criticized for shifting late-night comedy towards a more political and less entertaining format.
- ▪Stephen Colbert's final episode aired on Thursday night.
- ▪The episode featured celebrity guests but lacked memorable moments.
- ▪Colbert's show has been criticized for turning late-night comedy into a political discourse.
5 outlets in our directory ran this story, first to last over 3 hours. All of the coverage we found sits in one bucket: lean left. That one-sidedness is itself worth noticing.
- ▪ Stephen Colbert’s Final ‘Late Show’ Draws Most Weeknight Viewers of His Tenure — The Hollywood Reporter
- ▪ ‘The Late Show With Stephen Colbert’ Finale Attracts 6.74 Million Viewers, Its Most-Watched Weeknight Episode Of All Time — Variety
- ▪ ‘The Late Show With Stephen Colbert’ Ends Its Run With Most-Watched Weeknight Episode Ever — Deadline
- ▪ Colbert’s Final ‘Late Show’ Draws 6.7 Million Viewers — NYT > Top Stories
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| Original publisher | New York Post |
| Canonical URL | https://nypost.com/2026/05/22/entertainment/stephen-colberts-final-late-show-wasnt-funny-or-emotional-at-all-just-like-his-last-11-years/ |
| Publication time | Fri, 22 May 2026 13:41:55 -0400 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-05-22T17:47:02.716Z |
| Last seen | 2026-05-22T17:47:02.716Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
| Excerpt method | First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited. |
| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | TmNCnKurx8ei · 5 stories |
| Cluster logic | Grouped by semantic title/content similarity across sources within a rolling window. Same-publisher template collisions are excluded from coverage comparison. |
| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
| Substitutes article? | No — link-out required for full text |
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| Indexing | May the item be indexed (stored, ranked, made findable)? | Allowed |
| Snippet | May a short excerpt of the publisher's text be shown? | Allowed |
| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
Johnny Oleksinski TV Stephen Colbert’s final ‘Late Show’ wasn’t funny or emotional at all — just like his last 11 years By Johnny Oleksinski Published May 22, 2026, 1:41 p.m. ET See more of our coverage in your search results. Add The New York Post on Google As Stephen Colbert was setting up a bit on his final episode of “The Late Show” Thursday night, he inadvertently explained why his canceled CBS program became so unbelievably off-putting and tedious. “We thought the best way to celebrate what we’ve done over the last 11 years is to do a regular episode where I come out here and talk about the national conversation,” Colbert said.
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