Beyond Trump jokes: how has late-night comedy fared in the Biden era?
Somehow, it’s been almost a year since the advent of late-night television’s post-Trump conundrum – with the end of an administration that was both a boon for ratings and a creative dead-end, how would liberal political comedy move forward? Late-night television, from Stephen Colbert’s emotional monologues to Seth Meyers’ furious Closer Look segments to Saturday Night Live’s star-studded cold opens, helped millions of viewers process an un-processable deluge of deranged, infuriating headlines in the years after the 2016 election.
It also tested the definition of insanity, stranding writers and hosts in a rut of stale jokes about an administration beyond parody. Four years of bad impressions and too-similar jokes exposing the limits of satire; one night in 2018, five late-night hosts . Where would one of the most consistent and least diverse
