Stephen Colbert Rides in On His White Horse and.....

Tomorrow begins a new era in late night when Stephen Colbert hosts "The Late Show" on CBS.  I have been looking forward to it for months, and thanks to recent profiles in The New York Times and GQ my hopes are sky high; So high that I am actually worried that maybe they are pitched a little to close to the sun, and fiery disappointment is inevitable.

Huh.  There was actually a picture of Stephen Colbert riding a horse online.  Huh.

At the best I'm hoping for something sublime....and as I write this I realize that I will probably not get  it.  But I am hoping that maybe Colbert can find a sweet spot between smart and funny that is really hard to find.

It's not simply a matter of Jon Stewart having exited stage right (Though I actually felt that as he got closer to calling it quits his snark often got the better of him).  Consider the other options:  John Oliver does ever so well but a weekly show leaves him in short supply and I don't get HBO in anycase; Men in Blazers are great but very niche; Jimmy Fallon is very funny and fun and his interviews are very personable, but they lack substance to me, and you can only watch Danny DiVito play flip cup so many times.  That leavse Jimmy Kimmel....well, you know, I've never really watched Kimmel, but I remember "The Man Show" and I've always assumed his late night show is the same without the girls on trampolines or that guy who played piano who could just down a whole beer down his gullet.  Those were the two reasons to watch the show, as far as 14 year old Nick Marickovich was concerned,  and so I haven't bothered.  No one talks about Kimmel so I am also assuming I'm not missing too much...

So here comes Stephen Colbert, free to be himself at last, a person who seems capable of being humorous and deep by turns, capable of speaking to both politicians and musicians, capable of capturing the zeitgeist of our days...

Na na na....There I go again.  Reel it back in.  Maybe part of my hope is that I feel no one is more prepared to open the show than Mr. Colbert could be.  For many months he and a large staff have been writing, filming, revamping sets, doing all those things that a show must do to be a success.  Add to that the years that Colbert has been working, from touring around the country in a smelly van with Second City to taking "The Colbert Report" to the troops in Iraq, and you have a man with immense experience that has lead to this moment, where at last maybe we will all see who this man actually his.

Hopefully it is going to be great.  Give you joy of your success, Mr. Colbert!  I'll be watching, maybe, if I can stay awake that long.

At they very least, I'll DVR it and watch it the next day.  If I remember.