It’s only been a few days since David Letterman announced his retirement from late night television, yet the
Simpsons’ creators managed so quickly to do an excellent opening couch gag in honor of the great comedian and TV host.
That’s not the first time Letterman appears on a
Simpsons’ opening gag. A much younger Dave first appeared on the show’s season 5, in the episode
The Last Temptation of Homer, originally aired December 1993. Although he had already left NBC for CBS at that time, the studio kind of looks more like
Late Night than the
Late Show on that episode.
As expected, the reporters have already started dropping the names most likely to inherit Dave’s seat, with Craig Ferguson being the most obvious choice, but Steven Colbert, Jon Stewart and Drew Carey appear to be among the candidates. All this definitely brings to mind the third season of the brilliant
Louie, in which there’s a plotline spanned in three episodes with Letterman announcing his retirement and Louis C.K., a much respected but unknown stand-up comedian, offered the chance to audition to become his replacement. Even David Lynch is in it, and he’s hilarious. No matter how unlikely all this sounds, it's possible that a presumed Louis C.K talk show of his own would be something really interesting for today's comedy TV.
One thing’s for sure. There’s no late night TV drama like the late night wars that occurred on NBC at least twice over the past 20 years, so don’t expect to be impressed much.
One other thing’s for sure too. Letterman will be missed indeed.
ZR
