The Colbert collapse: How television’s sharpest satirist lost his edge — and his show

On May 21, Stephen Colbert will host his final episode of The Late Show on CBS, bringing down the curtain not only on his own 11-year run but on the entire Late Show franchise, a CBS institution since David Letterman launched it in 1993. The finale will feature an all-star parade: Jimmy Kimmel, Jimmy Fallon, Seth Meyers, John Oliver, Letterman himself, Tom Hanks, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Pedro Pascal, and the Strokes. Kimmel, in a nod to their friendship, will air a rerun rather than compete. The send-off will be suitably grand.

But here is the uncomfortable truth that no amount of celebrity cameos can paper over: The show ending is not quite the one many of us, those who were devoted fans of Colbert in his Comedy Central heyday, had hoped it would become. When Colbert took over from Letterman in 2015, I was genuinely excited. I had written in Public Discourse,