Stephen Colbert Was Feeling Merry on Impeachment Eve
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/13/arts/television/stephen-colbert-late-night-trump-impeachment.html Version 0 of 1. Welcome to Best of Late Night, a rundown of the previous night’s highlights that lets you sleep — and lets us get paid to watch comedy. If you’re interested in hearing from The Times regularly about great TV, sign up for our Watching newsletter and get recommendations straight to your inbox. On Wednesday, the House will begin with public impeachment hearings into President Trump. Stephen Colbert celebrated “Impeachment Eve” on Tuesday night, decorating an “impeachment tree” with “all the traditional ornaments” including Trump’s “perfect phone call” transcript as a tree-topper and some “quid pro snow.” “I’m so excited, I won’t be able to sleep — so like every other night of the Trump presidency.” — STEPHEN COLBERT “We get to hear live, in-person testimony from government officials about the president’s double-dealing in Ukraine. And to counter that, Trump is planning a bigly reveal of his own. He wrote: ‘I will be releasing the transcript of the first, and therefore, more important phone call with the Ukrainian president.’ His defense has gone from ‘read the transcript’ to ‘no, wait, hold on — read this other transcript because it’s first, and therefore more important.’ His younger son Eric is not going to be happy to hear the first is more important. ” — JIMMY KIMMEL “Mr. President, if you’re claiming the first is the most important of something, there are two additional wives that might disagree with you.” — STEPHEN COLBERT “The only way the phone call could be more important than the one we read is if it turns out Trump said, ‘Listen, Zelensky, in a couple of months I’m going to call you, and as a joke, I’m going to try to extort you, O.K.? Keep that between us.’” — JIMMY KIMMEL, referring to President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine “Trump originally said he would release the transcript today; now he’s saying it will happen by the end of the week. What is this, a new Kanye album?” — JIMMY KIMMEL “We already have a transcript. We’ve got testimony from multiple witnesses, we’ve got the whole KFC bucket of crimes; we don’t need the coleslaw, too, O.K.?” — JIMMY KIMMEL “Well, it’s a good day to be inside because the new Disney streaming service launched today. Yep, Disney Plus is available and it features almost 500 movies. Five hundred movies or, as Samuel L. Jackson calls it, one year of work.” — JIMMY FALLON “But Disney Plus is pretty amazing. It features all the movies from Marvel, Star Wars and Pixar. And just to compete with Netflix, it also features a thousand stand-up specials from Disney characters you’ve never heard of.” — JIMMY FALLON “Disney Plus launched today and almost immediately crashed, which is too bad, but at least their error screen was really cute.” — TREVOR NOAH “Now, a lot of people are disappointed that they couldn’t watch Disney Plus because, I mean, where else are they going to watch TV now?” — TREVOR NOAH “Yeah, experts think Disney Plus could be the biggest threat to Netflix yet. Right now, both streaming services are racing to see who can raise the price a dollar each month without you noticing. Seriously, you could tell Netflix is worried; instead of asking, ‘Are you still watching?,’ now it says, ‘And where the hell do you think you’re going?’” — JIMMY FALLON Kristen Bell joined Jimmy Fallon in a medley of historical Disney tunes. In Nashville, Jimmy Kimmel enlisted Carrie Underwood to play a musical prank on unsuspecting fans shopping for boots. Rachel Maddow will talk about the Trump impeachment inquiry on “The Tonight Show” on Wednesday. Once the service starts working properly, subscribers can stream the 50 best things to watch on Disney Plus, including “The Rocketeer” and “Return to Oz.” |