Late shows return … with a lot to talk about

The late-night TV world boomed back Monday and everyone seemed excited to be there.
How excited? “More excited than the guy who went to see ‘Beetlejuice’ with Lauren Boebert,” Jimmy Fallon said. “More excited than the Jets fans for the first three plays of the season.”
Yes, they had a lot to talk about.
Boebert (a congresswoman from Colorado) and her guy were ejected from a theater, after being accused of vaping, groping and yelling. Jets fans were giddy until their new quarterback was injured on the third play. There was much more.
At 6:17 a.m. Monday, Jimmy Kimmel (shown here) said, one of his writers received this text from his mother: “Please don’t make tonight’s monologue all about Trump.” Kimmel shared that text with the audience and then … well, had a long chunk of the monolog that was all about Trump.
On the very day the late-night shows returned, Trump was in court, accused of drastically overstating the value of his properties. At the defendants’ table, he practiced his angry face, Seth Meyers said. “If you saw his face, you’d think he was up for all the murders.”
And outside the courthouse, Trump talked at length. He said the forms he’d filled out clearly had a note saying “don’t believe anything”; he said one property the judge listed at $18 million is worth 50 to 100 times as much.
“Only Donald Trump,” Kimmel said, “would inflate the value of his property, at a trial for inflating the value of his property.”
The talk shows were back in action because the writers’ strike was settled. At 11:35 p.m. weekdays, we get Stephen Colbert on CBS, Fallon on NBC and Kimmel on ABC. (Kimmel’s start was delayed until close to midnight by a football overrun; that will be a problem on Mondays.) Then it’s Meyers at 12:37 a.m. on NBC. HBO’s Bill Maher and John Oliver shows are back on Fridays and Sundays; Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show” returns at 11 p.m. Oct. 16.
The hosts praised the strike and its result; Kimmel called it “a big win for the little guy.”
And each faced an ongoing problem: Until the Screen Actors Guild strike is settled, actors can only be on a talk show if they don’t talk about their movies and TV shows.
So Matthew McConaughey was with Fallon, but talking about his book; Arnold Schwarzenegger was with Kimmel, but talking in general. Fallon also had singer John Mayer talking (prior to the closing song) … Colbert had scientist Neil deGrasse Tyson talking about his book … and Meyers skipped all of that. He virtually did a one-hour, sit-down monologue.
That’s really what the hosts wanted anyway. For five months, they’d been on the sidelines.
Colbert pushed it hard. He had a filmed bit … then a monologue … then came back from the commercial with another monologue.
He viewed the charges against Sen. Bob Menendez; since Egyptians were involved, it was clearly “a pyramid scheme.” He made a slight reference to the plane that was grounded because of diarrhea and mentioned the explosion of an airliner that included a Putin foe:
“Imagine sitting in coach and seeing the guy who tried to overthrow Putin. You’d be (trying to transfer to) the diarrhea plane.”
But often, Colberty talked about Trump. He pointed to the new “Never Surrender” line of merchandise, bearing Trump’s mug shot. “That mug show was taken the day he surrendered.”
Colbert (on CBS) and Meyers (on NBC) prospered during the Trump administration by pounding hard at the president. Fallon (NBC) and James Corden (who ended his nine-year CBS run) were less political and sometimes left behind. Kimmel (ABC) was somewhere between.
Then came the Biden years, when the headlines cooled and ratings dropped. This summer, things headed up again, amid politics and indictments. The latenight hosts sat on the sidelines … until now.