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We said goodbye to Stephen Colbert last night even knowing we'll be seeing him again soon. In all the excitement since Colbert was anointed David Letterman's replacement, we've given Craig Ferguson short shrift. Ferguson split the CBS late-night bill with Letterman for just shy of a decade as host of The Late Late Show, a run that concludes tonight. "I will sit behind Dave as long as he sits there," Ferguson said in 2008. This April, Ferguson followed Letterman in announcing his departure. Minutes after Colbert's sendoff, Ferguson told a joke: "'Knock knock.' 'Who's there?' 'Craig.' 'Craig who?' 'That's show business.'"
Ferguson rightly called his program "the strangest show on late-night television." He stood too close to the camera during his mostly-extemporaneous monologue, bantering with his sidekick, Geoff, a gay robot skeleton with a mohawk and a Price Is Right name tag. Secretariat—played by two men in a Gumby-esque horse costume—lived in a stable off stage left, near the invisible band. Instead of drinking from a network mug, Ferguson favored a coiled ceramic snake. In lieu of a censor's bleep, cursing on Late Late was drowned out by audio of Ferguson gasping "Ooh la la!" in a French accent. Betty White was always dropping by, dressed as a naughty authority figure—a zookeeper, a security guard. Pre-commerical, celebrity guests had to choose between hearing a harmonica solo, enduring an "awkward pause," or vying for the "big cash prize" (a low-stakes trivia question that always begins, "Iceland is in the North Atlantic. Its capital city is Reykjavik..."). At the end of each episode, a meowing kitten graphic helped Ferguson recap the hour.
Ferguson and Colbert have a lot more in common than being Letterman's heir apparent and actual heir. Their shows ran concurrently (2005-2014), nabbing each host a White House Correspondents' Dinner audience with President George W. Bush, and a Peabody Award (Colbert won for raising Super PAC awareness, Ferguson won for his interview with Archbishop Desmond Tutu). Both men have an affinity for costumes and mimicry. They are outspoken patriots—Colbert addressed his viewers as "nation" and played up the self-absorbed American stereotype; Ferguson, who was born in Scotland, became a U.S. citizen in 2008 and celebrated by getting Benjamin Franklin's "Join or Die" cartoon tattooed across his forearm. Even their book titles are almost indistinguishable: I Am American (and So Can You!) (Colbert) and American on Purpose: The Improbable Adventures of an Unlikely American (Ferguson).
More than 2,000 times, Ferguson greeted his audience by proclaiming (in earnest), "It's a great day for America!" Post-9/11, hearing a foreign voice say something positive about the country on a nightly basis was reassuring. "I pride myself on being honest when I come out and do this," Ferguson said on a 2006 episode following the death of his father—exactly the opposite of the ironic Stephen Colbert character we know and love. "I feel the deal I've made with you over the time I've been here is that I come out and talk about what's on my mind, and if I didn't do this it would be shameful."
Somehow, we loved being lied to on The Colbert Report. We lament the end of the pundit charade. But in his new role, Colbert will likely be more authentic and vulnerable. In other words, more Ferguson-like. So let's give Craig the goodbye he deserves.
